Exeter Street in Boston, just blocks away from the twin explosions that injured more than 100 people and killed at least three. Photo by Steve Klamkin, WPRO News.
By Kim Kalunian, WPRO News
More than 100 Rhode Islanders participated in the Boston Marathon Monday, including several state troopers and members of the local media.
Mark Searles, meteorologist for WJAR Channel 10, had just finished the race about 10 minutes before the explosions. Although he said he didn’t hear the explosion personally, his wife did.
“She said she clearly heard the explosion,” Searles told WPRO’s Matt Allen Monday night. “She described it like heavy metal sheets falling, like they thought maybe the bleachers had collapsed, or a truck had hit an overpass… that kind of loud, horrific sound.”
Searles said people were very confused at first, but then people started to question: was it a bomb?
“The look on people’s faces was just shock, surprise,” he said. “That’s the last thing you would think of at an event like this.”
Searles he and his wife held hands on their drive home, with their three daughters in the back seat.
“It makes you really thankful,” he said. “It puts a lot of things in perspective.”
Ed Fitzpatrick, political columnist for The Providence Journal, also ran the marathon and finished about a half hour before the first explosion. He said when he heard the first explosion, he thought it was an accident on Route 93. It was the second explosion that made him and his family stop and wonder what was going on.
Fitzpatrick’s wife was in the stands at the finish line earlier, and his children would have been there as well if they hadn’t had school.
“It’s a horrible thing,” he said. “I just came back very angry and heartbroken over the whole thing.”
State Police Superintendent, Colonel Stephen O’Donnell, said six State Troopers ran in the race. All of them are safe and unharmed but somewhere very close to the explosions. One, he said, ran to help others that were injured by the blasts.
“He’s a civilian, he’s a state trooper, but he saw what you see in war,” O’Donnell told John DePetro on the WPRO Morning News.
Trooper Roupen Bastajian has told multiple media outlets that he saw many people with severe injuries, including 25-30 with missing legs.
