Boston Strong

by Casey Sherman

  A block or so away, he saw a cab. But it was a red cab from the town of Brookline. Being a city councilor, he knew the rules in Boston were strict that out-of-town cabs are not allowed to pick up passengers in Boston proper. He thought about this for a split second, but then realized the gravity of the situation.

  This was a dire emergency. So he grabbed as many people as he could and shoved them into the cab and jumped in himself. He told the driver to just drive away from Boylston Street.

  He thought about his friend at the Charlesmark. His ears rang. He told the driver to take the group to his house in Mission Hill. There, the group exited the cab, all of them stunned and confused about what was going on.

  The councilor was safe but quickly realized that whatever had happened on Boylston Street had happened in his district. He knew he had to get to work.

  He started getting calls from constituents, clergy, business owners, friends in the neighborhood. There were so many questions: Where do we go? What happens to our business? Have people died?

  Ross realized that the neighborhood needed a safe place to go for comfort, assistance, answers, love, community. He called Boston Police Superintendent Danny Linskey and asked him if there was a way to open the historic Trinity Church in Copley Square as a resource center for residents and businesses.

  “Impossible,” Linskey told him. It was in the secure zone.

  The pastor of First Church Boston on Marlboro Street offered the cathedral to the community.

  “People were freaking out, and they needed somewhere to go,” Ross says.

  Michelle L’Heureux tried to remain calm while her caregivers wrapped her leg and arm in gauze. She heard others in the store screaming in pain.

  Michelle still clutched her phone in a death grip with her right hand. She handed the device to first responder Lauren Blanda.

  “Can you punch in ‘dad’?” Michelle said. Michelle thought there was a chance she wouldn’t make it, or at least would be losing a limb, and wanted desperately to hear the calming voice of her father, Paul, a retired firefighter in Auburn, Maine.

  Lauren handed the phone to Michelle.

  “Dad, a bomb went off. I’m really, really hurt,” she said.

  The father’s heart started pounding. Michelle would forever be his little girl. His little girl needed his help.

  “Michelle, you’re going to be OK. You’re in good hands. I need you to stay calm and I need you to stay awake,” he said. “Stay awake. I’ll find out where you’ll be. I love you, doll.”

  “I love you, Dad.”

  A runner who appeared to be a doctor showed up and asked her how she was doing. The man was checking on the injured, helping to prioritize treatment and transport for the EMTs and firefighters scrambling to deal with all the wounded.

  Michelle hung up with her father. An EMT came over and cut off her scarf and jacket.

  “Stay with her,” the EMT told the group. “We’ll be back for her. There’s someone a little worse. We’ll be right back.”

  Just then, a fire alarm went off at Marathon Sports. Someone ran in and screamed, “Everyone out!”

  Michelle thought there was a fire or another explosion. Andrew Daley, another caregiver, was sitting on the floor next to her.

  “I can’t feel my hand,” Michelle said, her anxiety level rising.

  “It’s from the belt. You’re OK. Your hand is OK,” he assured her.

  The EMTs returned and picked her up. One of them accidentally grabbed her wounded arm. She winced and screamed in agony.

  They put her in a wheelchair and quickly wheeled her out of the store, through the shattered glass and debris. The EMTs ran as they pushed the chair over the sidewalk, past the carnage. Michelle kept her head down, trying desperately not to see anything more gruesome than she had already witnessed.

  There was a bandage around her heel, and a woman ran alongside the wheelchair, keeping her leg elevated as they rushed down Boylston to the medical tent, where one of the EMTs called out her wounds.

  “Two open blast fractures,” the EMT shouted. Thankfully, that information turned out to be erroneous — somehow Michelle had suffered no broken bones.

  A blonde female EMT started cutting off all her clothes. They cut off her pants, her underwear and snipped right through the front of her bra.

  In a moment of levity, Michelle shouted at the woman doing the cutting, “That’s a new bra!” She managed to chuckle a bit.

  “At least you have a sense of humor,” the EMT said.

  She put an IV in Michelle’s arm, poured iodine all down the left side of her body, and wrapped her in gauze. A tag was put on her right hand with a number telling the EMTs that she was a priority transport. It was an agonizing wait as Michelle lay there, waiting to be taken to an unknown hospital to be treated for wounds she knew were serious — if not life threatening.

  While she was being treated, Michelle managed to fire off a text to a friend. “All cut up,” was all she could manage to type. The message got to a friend, who forwarded it to others. The message was interpreted, however, to mean that Michelle had only minor cuts and scrapes, so many of her friends were unaware just how severely injured she was.

  Relatives and friends saw her pre-bombing Facebook post and feared the worst, since Michelle hadn’t posted anything after the explosions. They started calling and texting. Sitting on a gurney, waiting to be transported, Michelle made a quick call to her cousin.

  “I’m really hurt. I’m in the medical tent. Call the rest of the family and tell them,” she said. “Dad already knows.”

  Her pregnant friend, Caroline, was on a gurney to her left, shaking.

  Is this really happening right now? was the thought that went through Michelle’s head.

  Michelle knew she was going to need surgery. She was scared. The only time in her life that she’d had surgery was when she was eight years old and had her tonsils out.

  “Am I going to lose my leg?” she asked an EMT.

  “You’re going to be OK,” was the ambiguous response.

  She was loaded into an ambulance and driven to Faulkner Hospital. During the ride, she texted Brian that she would be at Faulkner. He told her he loved her.

  A young blonde woman was in the ambulance with her, along with a young, African American male EMT. The woman, whose name Michelle has never learned, had cuts, and her clothes were ripped. She was crying.

  “Honey, you’re going to be OK,” Michelle said. She felt bad for the girl. She was so young, vulnerable, and so scared.

  Pain started to rush into Michelle’s leg and arm. Her leg was bouncing and hitting the bed as the ambulance hit potholes in the streets. They went over a huge one, and Michelle’s leg bounced. Her wound shook like a bowl of Jell-O. Excruciating pain shot through Michelle’s body.

  Her sense of humor surfaced again.

  “Fucking Massachusetts potholes!” she shouted. The EMT started laughing.

  [10]

  UNDER SIEGE

  Danny Keeler had spent much of the early afternoon walking up and down Boylston Street popping in and out of various bars and restaurants, including Abe & Louie’s and McGreevy’s, to monitor crowd control.

  “What’s your head count?” he’d ask the doorman. “Make sure you keep it at fifty and below. If we come back and it’s like that, you won’t have any problems with us.”

  Keeler was walking alone across Gloucester Street when he heard and saw the first explosion. His initial reaction was similar to others who had witnessed the blast.

  “I thought a transformer had let loose,” Keeler recalls.

  Almost a year earlier, the Back Bay section of Boston had been plunged into darkness when a 115,000-volt transformer exploded at a garage on Dalton Street, close to the finish line.

  Keeler immediately began running toward the smoke and noise emanating from Marathon Sports. The area was still choked with people. If it was a transformer explosion, someone was likely hurt. His time in the US Marines and his
years on the police force had trained Keeler to be instinctive. He had also been trained to run in the direction of trouble — not away from it.

  “In thirteen years in homicide, I’ve been involved in a lot of shootings. I’ve seen a lot of chaos,” Keeler says. “But I firmly believe that God put me there that day.”

  He had reached Fairfield Street when suddenly he heard another devastating blast — this time coming from behind him. He turned around immediately and could see another large cloud of smoke, followed by the sound of ear-piercing screams.

  This ain’t no transformer fire, he thought to himself. We’re getting bombed.

  Since he was closer to the second explosion, Keeler decided to double back down Boylston Street to the scene at Forum. There was panic everywhere. People were turning over tables outside restaurants and running in every direction. Keeler tried to wade through the waves of fleeing spectators, but it was impossible. He jumped off the sidewalk and approached the middle of the street when he got his first glimpse of true devastation.

  “I saw a leg lying on the street. It was on fire.”

  The charred body part looked like a log that had been tossed atop a fire pit.

  Keeler grabbed his radio. “This is Delta 984. I’ve got multiple bombs at the finish line. I need some help down here.”

  He requested that Ring Road, adjacent to Boylston Street, be closed off immediately.

  “Ring Road’s gonna be our evac route. I need you to shut it down at Huntington [Avenue] for MOP [Mobile Operations], I want that clear. I need the lanes cut clear for the fire department.”

  Keeler’s first thought was to get the victims away from the scene and to the hospital as quickly as possible.

  Three officers ran up to Keeler looking for guidance — looking for orders.

  “Danny, what do you need from me?” asked Boston Police Captain Frank Armstrong.

  “I need you to keep these lanes clear [near the bombing scene],” Keeler told him. “Don’t have the fire department come in here and drop their trucks anywhere. Keep these lanes clear.”

  Keeler ordered the others to gain control of the bombing scenes in front of Forum and Marathon Sports. Meanwhile, other Boston police officers at and around the finish line began calling into dispatch asking for additional help.

  “The only one I want to hear from is 984,” the police dispatcher ordered. “984’s got the channel.”

  At that moment, Detective Sergeant Danny Keeler took command of the biggest crime scene in the history of the city.

  Javier Pagan had never had to fire his service weapon in his nineteen years on the job. He had drawn it many times, usually while working the midnight-to-eight shift while searching buildings or chasing someone in an alley. But he had never before felt that his life was in danger and that he might need to use it to kill someone — until now.

  Just before 3 p.m., he was standing near the announcers’ booth watching the steady flow of runners cross the finish line. All of a sudden he heard boom!

  Pagan was about ten feet away from the blast. He put his hand on his weapon and started running toward the explosion. Just then, he heard a second loud blast. He drew his gun. He was surrounded by fellow cops.

  “Holy shit,” Javier said aloud. He clutched his weapon. His mind raced. His heart rate leaped. He was standing in the middle of Boylston Street, chaos unfolding around him, next to fellow officers Rachel McGuire and Kevin McGill. A photographer snapped a photo of the three of them, in between the two blasts. Rachel has her gun drawn, while Kevin is toting his radio. Javier has his hand on his weapon as he readies to draw it. All three have sunglasses on and stern looks on their faces. A runner knocked down by the blast is lying on the cement in front of them. Debris litters the pavement. The iconic picture would later land on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

  Smoke filled the air. People were screaming. For Javier, the scene was surreal. Everything was moving in slow motion. He felt like he was watching a movie, and was having a hard time coming to grips with the reality that he was in the middle of a terror attack. He thought back to his training.

  “Where there’s one bomb, there’s two bombs,” he remembered. “The first is usually set to do harm while the second is set to kill first responders. It’s a classic terror tactic.”

  He also remembered that the event was being televised, and his mind quickly thought of his family members turning on the TV or the radio, knowing he was at the finish line.

  On the sidewalk where the first blast erupted, two rows of fences were lying on the ground. People were under them. He joined the group pulling the fences and barricades apart.

  During his career, he had seen plenty of people stabbed or shot, but he had never seen people with missing limbs. He did this day.

  Pagan and others grabbed the first barricades outside Marathon Sports and yanked them all the way across the street to the other side. Medical professionals were arriving.

  But there were hundreds of people in the bleachers. They began running for their lives and many discarded bags. Pagan, like every cop down there that day, thought every bag he saw was another bomb.

  His captain yelled to him, “There’s a bag underneath the bleachers!”

  Dozens of people raced inside the Boston Public Library just behind the bleachers to escape the carnage outside. He ran over to the glass doors to the library and saw a security guard.

  “Lock the door and get everyone to the other side of the security checkpoint just in case this is a bomb!” Pagan shouted to the stunned guard.

  There were still runners stuck in the street between where the two bombs went off. Pagan returned to the street and helped direct stranded runners away from the bombing site. His adrenaline pumped. He watched in shock as victim after victim was pulled from the wreckage, most bleeding. Some had limbs missing. Some had their clothes shredded by debris while others looked like they were burned. Pagan was certain people were dead. Judging by the destruction, he thought the number was going to be in the dozens.

  Officer Andrew Crosby was less experienced than Javier Pagan, but he had still seen a lot during his seven years on the force — and also during his own childhood in South Boston. The son of a police officer himself, Crosby works out of District D-4 (Back Bay/South End) under Danny Keeler. Boylston Street is his normal daily beat. After grabbing a quick lunch, he had been ordered to relieve another officer on front of Forum at around 1 p.m. He watched as tired runners crossed the finish line one after the next. Crosby was amazed by their resilience.

  “People were bleeding [from running],” he recalls. “It just looked awful. It’s just fun to watch.”

  Crosby took up position near the mailbox outside Forum. Someone approached him and asked for the easiest way to cross Boylston Street, since the barricades had made it nearly impossible to do so.

  “Well you can take the T down and cross underneath Mass Ave and try that way,” Crosby advised.

  Seconds later, the first bomb exploded.

  “I look and I saw smoke coming up down the street. I remember looking at my partner and he started moving toward the direction of the blast.”

  Crosby joined his partner, Chris Kenefick, when suddenly he saw a bright flash off to his left. The flash was followed by a big fireball. People started running. Crosby tried to maintain order, but it was impossible.

  “I saw a guy lying in the middle of the street. He was a spectator and got blown into the middle of the street,” Crosby remembers.

  The man looked up at Crosby. “Am I going to die?”

  “You don’t have a foot,” the officer replied. “Let me go get some help.”

  Crosby turned around and walked to the barricade and saw carnage everywhere. He turned back and the injured spectator was gone.

  “Someone must have scooped him up,” Crosby says.

  He then took the pocket knife off his belt. He cut through the straps of the barricades outside Forum and started ripping them down. While all this was happening, runner
s were still turning onto Boylston Street and heading toward the finish line.

  “Get out of here, get out of here,” Crosby ordered them. He then received an order on the radio: “Start clearing buildings.”

  Crosby had never been more afraid in his life. “I didn’t know how many bombs there were,” he recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘This is it. This is how I’m going to go.’”

  Crosby’s boss, Police Commissioner Ed Davis, had watched the marathon for about an hour with Governor Patrick and other VIP’s before heading back to his house in Hyde Park, where he dropped off his wife and joined a conference call with Vice President Joe Biden and top cops from other big cities to discuss a controversial gun bill making its way through Congress. Both Davis and Mayor Menino were at the forefront of a national gun reform package backed by Biden and President Obama. Davis took the call in his bedroom. It lasted forty-five minutes.

  As soon as he hung up with the vice president, Davis’s phone rang. It was Dan Linskey.

  “Hey boss, I don’t know what we’ve got, there are two explosions at the finish line.”

  “What kind of explosions?” Davis asked.

  “I don’t think they’re electrical in nature,” Linskey replied.

  Davis has had extensive international training regarding the use of IEDs (improvised explosive devices), bombs, and other methods of terrorist attacks. After the subway bombings in London in 2005, which killed fifty-two people and injured more than seven hundred more, Davis spent time with Scotland Yard officials and studied the attack — all the while thinking of the uncanny similarities between that city’s mass transit system and Boston’s MBTA subways. Immediately, the fact that there were two explosions had Davis concerned that it could be a coordinated attack like so many he’s seen internationally. “I was hoping it was a manhole explosion, but I didn’t like the sound of it,” Davis later recalled.

  “Are you there?” Davis asked Linskey.

  “No, I’m in Kenmore Square. I’m racing up there now. Making my way up there now.”

  Davis could hear sirens in the background and police radios blaring. He didn’t have his portable radio with him, so he asked Linskey, “What are they saying on the radio?”