With tens of thousands of thousands of people on hand to witness the Boston Marathon bombing, it was only a matter of time before eyewitness accounts began to hit the internet, television stations, and radio airwaves.
If you are interested in reading more from the people on the scene at the time of the attack, the following stories will be of interest to you:
Explosions at the Finish Line: Two Eyewitness Accounts of Boston’s Marathon Attack
Two explosions near the finish line of Monday’s Boston Marathon have left at least three people dead and more than 130 injured. The devices, which a government official tells TIME were “crude” in construction, detonated on the sidelines of the racecourse, causing both runners and spectators to flee in every direction. A pair of white smoke clouds enveloped the sidelines.
Tragedy in Boston: One Photographer’s Eyewitness Account
LightBox spoke with Boston Globe photographer John Tlumacki, who photographed the explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Tlumacki, who has photographed more than 20 marathons in his 30 years at the Globe, describes the sheer chaos of the scene:
I was covering the finish line at the ground level at the marathon. Everything was going on as usual. It was jovial — people were happy, clapping — and getting to a point where it gets a little boring as a photographer. And then we heard this explosion.
Bombing Eyewitness: Blood, Mayhem and a Collective Scream
I was near the Apple Store, heading to the Dunkin Donuts when I heard it. I was maybe a block away from it, and it was really loud, like a lightning strike had hit really close. And then I heard another one.
People started screaming. I saw a guy with his shirt off, and it was wrapped around his hand and it was soaked red with blood, but I don’t think he had lost it. I didn’t look too closely.
Eyewitness: Boston Marathon explosions rocked nearby building
George Scoville was one block away from the Boston Marathon’s finish line, inside the Lord & Taylor department store Monday afternoon when he felt two explosions rock the store within about “15 to 20 seconds” of one another.
“I was actually in a shopping mall right next to the finish line, Lord & Taylor, and heard an explosion and thought it was construction or building demolition,” the 33-year-old Scoville, a Washington, D.C. resident, told The Daily Caller in a phone interview from Boston Monday.
A roundup of first-person accounts of the explosions and their aftermath near the Boston Marathon finish line on Monday:
“All of a sudden you heard a big boom, and saw a big cloud of white smoke right around beyond the church.”
— Laura McGinness, 40, of Bedford, Mass., who had just finished the marathon and was retrieving her belongings from the park in Copley Square in front of Trinity Church
These are just some of the many eyewitness accounts that are being published online. Check out these stories for firsthand accounts of what went on before, during, and after the attack.