Editor's note: The weekly news magazine Slobodna Bosna, located in Sarajevo, recently filed this report about the family of the Trolley Square killer, Sulejman Talovic. They had fled to Salt Lake City as refugees from the war that tore apart the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. On Feb. 12, 2007, 18-year-old Sulejman Talovic used a pistol and a shotgun to murder five and wound four others at Trolley Square, Salt Lake City. The parents briefly returned to their hometown of Talovici, Bosnia, in March 2007 for the burial of the man, who was shot by police to end his rampage. Recently the family, including daughters, went back to Bosnia. Slobodna Bosna had this update from the Tuzla region in the country's northeast area. The article was translated by Slobodna Bosna's Nedim Hasic and edited by Joe Bauman of the Deseret Morning News.
DUBNICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Talking to the Talovic family is almost "Mission: Impossible."
Neighbors claimed the family doesn't talk to anybody. Sabira Talovic, mother of Sulejman Talovic, doesn't leave the home. The same is true for the daughters, Medina, Fatima and Sanela.
When we arrived at the house, Sabira opened the door and said she does not want to talk to the media at all. A few moments later, her husband, Suljo Talovic, did speak with us.
"We did not run away from the U.S.A.," he said. "Nobody said to us that we have to go. Nobody pushed out of Salt Lake City, and nobody threatened us or treated us badly.
"On the contrary, local people comforted us after the tragedy, they gave us consolation. We came back to Bosnia simply because this is the best place for us at the moment, for me, for my sick wife and for our children,"
Dubnica is a small village about 93 miles from the capital, Sarajevo. It is near the former Eagle Base, used by the U.S. Army during its peace-keeping operations in Bosnia. Many refugees from the eastern part of Bosnia have made new lives here.
The Talovics bought land with a ruined house, destroyed during the fighting of the 1990s. They are building a new home.
Suljo Talovic said he became a heavy smoker in the past year, since the Trolley Square shooting, smoking 30 or 40 cigarettes a day. He doesn't speak a lot. All he wants, he said, is to finally settle down and continue with his wife.
"This is not our final decision," he added. "We are still thinking about life in the United States. Someday, maybe, we will go back to the U.S.A. We will see.
"But my wife is very sick. She suffered a heart attack after our son committed the massacre, and I hope this will be a good place for her to get well."
He said that nobody in Salt Lake City judged the family because of what Sulejman did.
"Lots of people called us, and they offered help. We met with the mother of one of the victims. She called us and asked to see us, to talk to us. It was human conversation.
"It is a really big thing for me, it means a lot to me, that people know that we are not guilty for what our son did."
New neighbors here claim the Talovic family is not acting the way most people here do. They do not go out, and they don't communicate much with others.
"A few days after they came, I tried to talk to them, to introduce myself," said one of the neighbors. "It was a really strange conversation. It was really short; we are not accustomed to that. It is the tradition here, that neighbors visiting door-to-door is more important than family, but it was not like that.
"Suljo tried to explain that they could not live under the pressure of the local media, and decided to come back."
Relatives of the Talovic family in the village of Talovici, near Srebrenica, told us that they were really surprised when they heard about the return. They said they could not understand why Suljo decided not to come back to Talovici.
With employment problems, many people in Talovici are dependent on humanitarian aid and money that their relatives send from the United States or Switzerland. Besides not understanding why they didn't return to Talovici, nobody can believe they decided to leave America.
"United States are the dream for every one of us," said Vahidin, a relative of Suljo's in Talovici.
"A few days after they came back, my father visited them in Dubnica. Suljo explained to him that he is planning to live in Talovici during the summer. He also claimed that one day he will go back to the U.S.A."
After Slobodna Bosna published an article about the family's return to Bosnia, many people discussed it on Internet chat rooms.