One UH alumnus decided to take his wife to Boston for Patriot’s Day — she wanted to run in the marathon, but the annual Boston Marathon saw cheers from a half million spectators and some 20,000 runners mutate into screams of fear and pain as two bombs detonated near the finish line of the 26.2-mile race Monday.
“’I saw this guy’s legs get blown off,’” Tremain Fedke, 28, said he heard someone say.
“’Just stay where you are,’” he said his father-in-law told him. Fedke didn’t know about the explosions, yet. He was just trying to reconnect with his family member after the older man visited a medical tent for claustrophobia.
According to The Chicago Tribune, the attack left three dead, including an 8-year-old boy, and at least 140 injured. Some victims were even left amputated.
Thankfully, Fedke said, his wife and the rest of their family were safe.
“We’re blessed,” he said. “At about mile 22, she just wanted to walk. If she had walked, she would have been right there by either one of the explosions, and her family was waiting at the finish line for her, so they might have been hurt, as well.”
Alden Fedke, Texas A&M graduate, said she finished the race in four hours and three minutes. The first bomb went off when the clock showed four hours and eight minutes.
“I had just passed the finish line,” she said, still shocked from the experience. She said she then heard something everyone originally thought was thunder, until they realized the truth.
“Everyone was just like, ‘explosion, explosion.’ We were all freaking out,” she said. “It was very scary, but I just thank the lord that I didn’t walk those last few minutes. I thank the lord that he helped me not stop.”
The Chicago Tribune said the Boston Marathon attack was the worst bombing in the U.S. since Sept. 11, and President Barack Obama promised to find the people responsible for it.
“Make no mistake, we will get to the bottom of this,” Obama told Washington reporters. The event will be treated as “an act of terror.”
Alden said she had the second best running time, just 20 minutes more than the first runner’s time, and still 15 minutes faster than the average finish time, according to Runner’s World magazine.
More than 5,000 runners never finished.
“It was so horrible. And it was such a huge marathon — so many people worked hard to get there, and a lot of people couldn’t even finish,” Alden said.
The marathon, held on the third Monday of every April, starts in Hopkinton, Mass. and ends in Boston’s Copley Square — where the crowd is often at it’s thickest.
The two explosions were about 50 to 100 yards apart in this area, according to The Chicago Tribune.
After seeing shirtless and bloody victims and newly wheelchair-bound runners fleeing the aftermath, Tremain and his wife are finally headed home.
“Everyone is safe, and we are ready to go home,” he said. “The plane ride is going to be a little bit freaky, though.”
This is one of the worst-edited articles I’ve seen in a long time. “After behind”? The entire lead with the unclosed em-dash and illogical phrase sequence? The completely wrong information about the timing of the blast vs the timing of the a&m grad finishing? Fyi- the blast occurred more than two hours after the first and second runners crossed the finish line, making the claim about Felde’s 6-minute gap between finishing “second place” and the explosion simply impossible.
Thank you very much for your response; however, I am that person you are talking in flrefernece to. I crossed the finish line and the large clock showed 4:03. I ran a 3:40 but was in the second wave which started 20 minutes after the elite racers started. I’m sorry that you feel that this has nothing to do with you, but I think any terrosit attack affects us all! My husband graduated from the university of Houston I graduated from A&M but grew up in the Houston area. I’m sorry you feel this was not accurate according to timing, but it was in fact the case!