The bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon Monday was a terror attack and several West Virginians were dangerously close to the blasts that killed three people and injured 134 others.
Hancock County resident Teresa DeLong was running in her first Boston Marathon and was within half a mile of finishing it.
“All at once, the people in front of me just stopped running,” DeLong of New Cumberland said. “I didn’t know anything was going on at first and my first thought was, ‘Somebody’s been hurt and they’re going to have to bring an ambulance in.’ I just figured it was a runner that was hurt.'”
“Then we didn’t move at all. We were just stopped and then I heard someone say there was an explosion at the finish line,” DeLong told MetroNews Monday afternoon.
Her son Bob DeLong, a New Cumberland native who now lives in South Carolina, was waiting for her at that finish line. “I could see sharpnel flying through the air. The second explosion went off about ten feet to the right of me. It was gruesome, just gruesome,” he told MetroNews.
DeLong says he feared for his life.
“Absolutely, yea, absolutely. We were very nervous when we were inside a building after two bombs went off,” he said.
The explosions happened at about 2:45 Monday afternoon, a couple of hours after the fastest runners had finished the race.
University of Charleston Political Science and History Professor Brad Deel had crossed the finish line about 45 minutes before the bombs detonated. Usually, he says, he circles back around to cheer on the other runners as they complete the marathon run.
“Fortunately, today it was fairly windy and cold and I was just freezing and miserable so the only thing I did was get my checked bag from race officials and then I got on public transit and went back to my hotel,” Deel said. His wife contacted to let him know what had happened.
“I’m just shocked that something like this could happen at a race because, I swear, I thought about every police officer in New England was at that race.”
More than 40 of the runners in Monday’s 117th Boston Marathon registered as being from West Virginia.
They were among the 23,181 runners who were part of the race that started on Monday morning with 26 seconds of silence for the shooting victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with those affected by today’s tragic events in Boston,” Governor Earl Ray Tomblin said in a statement.
“We are monitoring information through the West Virginia Intelligence Fusion Center. No specific threats to West Virginia have been identified at this time.”