Boston Strong

by Casey Sherman

  “It’s Danny Keeler. I can’t understand him,” Linskey replied.

  Davis knew the detective sergeant well. He also knew Keeler was a Marine and was alarmed by the fact that something could rattle the veteran cop. This had to be serious.

  “Keeler’s calling for all the ambulances in the city, and he says he’s got multiple amputations,” Linskey said.

  It was then that Davis knew Boston had been attacked. And knowing that such attacks often occur in threes, his attention immediately turned toward protecting his officers and the public from a possible third bomb. Danny Keeler had already dispatched the bomb squad, and officers were boldly checking each and every one of the hundreds of bags discarded on bloody Boylston Street by terrified bystanders.

  The commissioner’s next call was to Rick DesLauriers, Special Agent in Charge of Boston’s FBI office. He called for the FBI’s bomb squad, also known as the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team, as well as all SWAT units.

  “Alright, I’m on my way,” said DesLauriers, who was at the FBI’s headquarters at Government Plaza across from Boston City Hall.

  “We are going to set up a command post at Ring Road, see me at Ring Road,” Davis told him.

  Davis ended the call, grabbed his service weapon, and headed for the door of his home.

  “What’s going on?” asked his wife.

  “We may have been attacked,” he said in full stride. “Turn on the TV and I’ll call you when I can.”

  The tires on Davis’s vehicle screeched as he pulled out of his driveway. He dialed Massachusetts State Police Colonel Timothy Alben and asked him to send all available units, especially the bomb squads and SWAT teams, to Boylston Street. The commissioner switched the radio in his SUV to a special frequency used for mass-casualty events. He heard multiple calls for ambulances. Radio chaos. Not quite panic, but as close to it as he’d seen in his decorated career.

  His next call was to Mayor Menino in the hospital.

  “Mr. Mayor, we’ve got a situation,” Davis told him. “There were two explosions at the marathon finish line.”

  “Jesus, does it sound like a bomb?” the mayor asked.

  “It’s not looking good, Mayor, but I’m not certain until I get there,” Davis said. “They were reporting multiple amputations, and that’s an indication that it was antipersonnel in nature. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  “Good luck,” the mayor said.

  Menino had been informed of the situation before the call from Ed Davis. Just before 3 p.m. that afternoon, one of the mayor’s security officers came in and told him, “A bomb just blew up at the marathon.”

  “Get more, get more information,” the mayor told the cop. He then addressed his staff. “Let’s not get nervous. Everyone calm down.”

  After talking with Davis on the phone, Menino sent his Chief of Staff Mitchell Weiss out to the command post near the finish line to get a read on exactly what was going on.

  Governor Patrick was making his way down Route 3 toward his home in Milton when he got a call from his daughter Katherine, who was living in the South End and could hear the commotion.

  “Dad, there were two big booms and everybody is running,” she explained frantically. “Was it a cannon? I think there’s smoke.”

  The governor told his daughter to stay calm and yelled up to his state police driver. “Trooper, is there something going on?”

  At that moment, the governor received another call, this time from Kurt Schwartz. He had been in the medical tent when the bombs went off. Schwartz had always been a calming voice in any storm. Yet, the governor could sense a hint of panic in his voice now.

  “Something has gone off down here,” Schwartz informed his boss. “There are body parts everywhere. It’s a mess.”

  Governor Patrick hung up the phone and shouted at his driver. “Get me downtown!”

  Commissioner Davis was already speeding down Huntington Avenue with his siren wailing and lights flashing. The first sign of trouble came about a mile from the finish line at the intersection of Huntington and Ruggles streets, where Davis spotted a young couple and a few girls crying hysterically. It looked like they had just gotten off the T, and they were looking at themselves, apparently to see if they were injured.

  Not a good sign if there are people impacted by the incident this far from the scene, he told himself.

  He made it to Ring Road, stopped short of Boylston Street, got out and jogged toward Forum, the site of the second explosion. There, on the bloodstained pavement in front of the restaurant, Davis saw the bodies of Martin Richard and Lingzi Lu. Davis had no idea who they were at the time, but he knew they were dead. He saw severely hurt spectators, many soaked in blood and with tourniquets tied tight around injuries, being loaded into police wagons to be rushed to the hospital.

  Transporting victims in anything other than an ambulance is normally against every city protocol. But in this case, there was no alternative. Every ambulance was busy, and time was of the essence — many victims could have easily bled out and died right there on the street. Doctors would later say that dozens of lives were saved by the quick actions of first responders, volunteers, and citizens, specifically citing the fact that victims were raced to the hospital as fast as humanly possible by whatever means necessary. There were even reports that pedicab drivers raced doctors from the hospitals to the wounded, and brought the wounded to the hospitals.

  The commissioner surveyed the scene. He saw broken windows. He saw blood pooling on the sidewalk. He walked on the street, stepping on nails and shards of metal. He recognized it as shrapnel and realized that these were, in fact, antipersonnel devices specifically designed to kill.

  Davis kept running to the first bomb scene in front of Marathon Sports. He saw that the blast had taken out windows three stories up. A LensCrafters store had had its windows shattered. There were smoldering body parts strewn along the sidewalk. He ran into Christopher Connolly, BPD’s top bomb expert. Boylston Street was littered with backpacks and handbags. Any one of them could contain a third explosive device.

  They happen in threes, Davis reminded himself.

  It was like a scene from the Oscar-winning film The Hurt Locker. The difference was that Connolly and his bomb cops weren’t wearing any protective gear as they began checking every bag and item left in the area. They held their breath and flinched as they opened each bag. Using a technique known as slash and tag, they used knives to cut open the bags, visually inspected them all to make sure they weren’t packed with explosives, and tagged them to denote that they had been checked and were and safe.

  Davis quickly realized that the two attacks were coordinated and were the work of terrorists. From his extensive international training, he knew the double bombing had all the characteristics of Islamic extremism. Even though no one was certain who had set off the bombs or why, Davis knew that their coordination and obvious purpose — to maximize both injuries and death, without regard for women or children — was clear evidence of a planned attack by trained international terrorists, possibly even al-Qaeda.

  They got us, he thought to himself, and called the mayor back.

  “It looks like a terrorist attack,” he told Menino. “I’m not sure when I’ll be able to call you back. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, but it might be a while.”

  The commissioner went through a mental checklist of everything that had to be done. First, he thought back to what he had learned in London in 2005. Because of what he had seen and what his bomb experts had found and told him about, he knew these were pressure cooker bombs very similar to the ones used in the London attacks. But unlike the London bombs, these ones were made with gunpowder. The London explosives used a peroxide-like accelerant.

  The first order of business was to clear the casualties. Next was to secure the scene and make it safe for investigators. Wary that there could be more undetonated bombs, Davis ordered his detectives to be careful but diligent. He also knew that video surveilla
nce had been the key to the London bombing probe and that it would also be crucial here.

  Danny Keeler knew it, too. “I need you to get all the cameras for me. I want you to go up and down the street both sides, identify where the cameras are, what we have, and list them for later,” Keeler told detective Earl Perkins. Perkins was not used to taking such orders. He had been demoted from deputy superintendent to detective sergeant in 2009, without any official reason given by Ed Davis. Still, he was an officer with tremendous pride, and he understood that a job had to be done.

  Cops on the street asked people if they had any cell phone videos or pictures of the explosions or the aftermath. Bystanders handed them over freely. Keeler sent Perkins and other detectives from building to building to look for cameras and to get building managers to turn over any available video.

  “I wanna see what happened before the bombings, not after,” he told Perkins. “If the video cameras are there, we’re gonna get it. Don’t let anybody fuck with you, and don’t take no for an answer.”

  Both Keeler and Perkins knew time was of the essence, as many surveillance systems wipe out footage after twenty-four hours.

  [11]

  SAVING LIVES

  Michelle L’Heureux was driven to Faulkner Hospital and rushed into the pre-operation unit in the emergency room, where she was given a morphine drip. The pain slipped away as X-rays were taken of her injuries. The doctors couldn’t believe she had no broken bones. They gave her a tetanus shot. A nurse asked Michelle if she could get her anything.

  “I really want my mom,” Michelle said, breaking into tears.

  “Can I get her for you?” the nurse replied.

  “No, you can’t. She’s passed away.” Michelle was now sobbing, thinking about her mother, Linda, who died in 2005 of throat cancer. She was just fifty and had never smoked. Linda’s mother, Dorothy — Michelle’s mémère (grandmother) — had passed away just two months before the marathon, at age eighty. They were the two strongest women in Michelle’s life, and she desperately wanted them at this moment.

  “Do you want the chaplain?” the nurse said.

  “Yes.”

  Michelle sensed controlled panic and an element of fear in the hospital. Doctors and nurses reacted with urgency and professionalism, but many had looks of terror and disbelief on their faces. It was clear that these people were witnessing something none of them had ever dealt with before. A few minutes passed, and a female chaplain arrived. The woman took both of Michelle’s hands into her own.

  “My mom died, and my mémère just passed away and I’m very scared right now. Can you just pray with me that the both of them are with me through this?” Michelle said.

  The chaplain prayed with Michelle that her mother and grandmother would watch over her throughout this ordeal. Michelle cried. But the prayer gave her strength, and she felt that she had no option but to be courageous and get through it.

  A doctor came in, put an oxygen mask over her face, and said: “You’re going to be OK.”

  On Boylston Street, Mery Daniel was slipping in and out of consciousness. She was drifting away. Am I gonna die? When I am gonna die? — she asked herself with eyes half closed. The image of her daughter, Ciarra, entered her mind.

  “I was thinking of my baby,” she recalls. “I kept thinking, Oh my God. I am glad I didn’t bring her.”

  Unlike most of those wounded outside Marathon Sports, Mery wasn’t taken to the medical tent. Her injuries were so severe, first responders placed her in the first available ambulance. The attendants asked her name, and she told them.

  “Are you with other people?” One of the EMTs asked, trying to keep Mery alert and awake. She shook her head no. There was frantic debate between the ambulance driver and the EMTs about which hospital to take her to: Boston Medical Center or Massachusetts General Hospital. They quickly decided on Mass General, and Mery could feel the ambulance begin to pull away from Boylston Street.

  “One of my legs, I had a tourniquet on it. I thought I was dying. I couldn’t believe the irony that as a medical school graduate, I was also a victim,” she says. “I should have been among those helping the wounded and not lying on a stretcher like I was.”

  Despite severe injuries to her legs, Mery was not screaming in pain. In fact, she couldn’t feel anything. She was getting very cold and knew that was a sign that she was losing too much blood. Mery passed out and awoke inside Mass General — in fact, she was the first bombing victim taken there. Awaiting her in the ER was a crowd of doctors and nurses, who immediately began ripping her clothes off to get a visual on her injuries. Doctors shouted codes, calling for different departments to get involved. They brought Mery straight into an operating room. She looked down at her right leg, which was covered in blood.

  “Save my leg, save my leg,” she begged the doctors. Mery fought to stay awake. She didn’t want to drift off, for fear that she would never wake up again. A nurse slipped an anesthesia mask over her face, and Mery could fight no more. She fell asleep while the doctors got busy trying to save her life.

  When the ambulances arrived at Forum, the EMTs rushed over and took Heather Abbott from Matt Chatham and the group that had helped her. They placed her on a stretcher and wheeled her past the carnage and into an ambulance. They wouldn’t let anyone go with her because they needed the room for other victims. There was no handbook for how to handle this one. The EMTs, cops, firefighters, and volunteers were literally packing as many injured people as they could fit into each ambulance.

  Heather saw another patient in the ambulance with an oxygen mask.

  “I’m going to put an IV in your arm,” the male EMT told her.

  “My right arm is better than my left arm,” Heather responded instinctively, remembering that when giving blood, she had been told that the veins were bigger in her right arm.

  “Will you call my parents?” she asked the EMT. Heather’s phone was long gone. She had no idea where it was. The only phone number she had memorized was her parents’ home number.

  Heather remembered that she had not talked to her mother that day and wasn’t even sure if her mother knew that she had gone to the marathon.

  The EMT made the call. Her mother, Rosemary, was home — thankfully.

  “I’m with your daughter,” the EMT spoke sternly. “I’m taking her to the hospital. She was injured. You need to get to Brigham and Women’s as soon as possible.”

  “What? Who is this? What are you talking about?” Rosemary asked.

  “I can’t talk. Just get to Brigham and Women’s as soon as possible,” he said, ending the call.

  It was then that Heather realized she didn’t have her pocketbook or her wallet, either. The items were back at Forum among the destruction and blood.

  The ambulance arrived at the Brigham, and Heather was rushed into the emergency room. The EMT cut off her clothes. “I have to take these and give them to the FBI,” he told her.

  From the second she heard the first explosion, Heather had thought of the attacks on 9/11. The smoke, the people running, the panic. She knew right away in her mind that it was a terror attack. The EMT mentioning the FBI was only further confirmation. She was brought directly into surgery. A mask was placed over her head, and she went out.

  A team of surgeons examined Heather’s injuries. Her left heel was completely blown off. What was left of her foot was shattered. There were broken bones and torn blood vessels. Still, doctors felt they could save it. They took a vein from her right leg and attached it to the foot to get the blood flowing. They wrapped it tightly, preserving the flesh and bone as best they could and making sure that all the veins and arteries were sealed off.

  The scene at the hospital was frenetic. The scene back on Boylston Street resembled a war zone.

  Boston firefighter Elson Monteiro, who was assigned to the corner of Boylston and Hereford streets, ran toward Boylston when the first bomb went off. He then heard the second explosion even closer to his location, so he turned and heade
d back toward Forum, telling civilians to run the other way, away from the bombs.

  He arrived at Forum and started to work on Martin Richard, who had a large amount of shrapnel in his chest.

  “In my mind, from visual inspection, [he] was dead,” Monteiro wrote in an after-action report.

  Martin’s mom, Denise Richard, stood over Monteiro’s shoulder and told the firefighter the boy was her son. Denise Richard was visibly injured, the firefighter noted. She was taken from the scene by EMTs, and Monteiro moved on to another patient, a man whose clothing was still on fire. Monteiro and some bystanders helped the man remove his burning clothes. The firefighter then moved over to a man whose foot was missing. Monteiro helped secure a belt around the man’s upper leg to keep him from bleeding out.

  Fellow firefighters arrived with backboards and started removing the most severely injured. Monteiro stayed with the man whose foot was gone and helped put him on a backboard. Firefighters carried the man to three different ambulances, but all were full. They finally put him into the back of a police van with two other severely injured patients. One firefighter held the belt tight around the man’s leg and rode with him to the hospital.21

  Firefighter Phillip Skrabut of Engine 17, District 7 in Dorchester, was assigned to work between Dartmouth and Exeter streets, near the finish line at Boylston Street. He was about five hundred feet behind the finish line walking toward the grandstands when the first bomb went off.

  “I saw the blast and then saw a crowd of people fall to the ground,” Skrabut wrote in a report.22

  When he heard the second explosion, he ran up the sidewalk under the grandstand toward Exeter Street, then crossed the street to the bombing site. Police and marathon volunteers were already tearing the barriers away, so Skrabut jumped onto the sidewalk, where he found at least a dozen severely injured people on the ground.