Across the media, survivors relived the traumatic moment, recalling the different ways their flight-or-fight impulses kicked in during the moments after the bombing. Debi Caprio was just about to cross the finish line when the first bomb went off. She told the The New York Times that she heard someone yell out that the bombing was a terrorist attack. “This is how my life is going to end,” she believed. She says she was amazed at the selflessness of the volunteers that day.
Hillary Anderson said she kept looking up for planes, thinking this was a second go for the terrorists involved with the attacks on 9/11. CBC News quoted survivors testifying in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s trial, who said the bombing was like a horror movie, noting the injuries and destruction caused by the bombs. Apparently, one woman said in court that people were telling her to get up and run, but she said she couldn’t. Her leg was missing.
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Jeff Chin, who was a block away from the blast, told People Magazine, “There was a woman carrying a girl who was maybe 8 years old, way too big to be carried. The girl was screaming, I’ll never forget how it sounded. She was screaming, not any words, but just shrieking and kicking and flailing. … The girl was just terrified.” He also said he watched a woman be trampled by the crowd, screaming in pain and terror, a horror he is not likely to soon forget.
