LIVINGSTON COUNTY — All five runners profiled in last week’s piece on competing in the Boston Marathon, Dave Coyne, Tom Jerris, Mark Zimmer, Doug Ehmann, and Tim Dwyer are all safe and not injured, following the explosions at the event earlier today.
The Genesee Sun will update this story as more information becomes available.
UPDATE: This evening, the Genesee Sun spoke with Dave Coyne, one of the runners from Livingston County, on what he saw and heard during today’s events.
Coyne said that he heard the first blast while running and thought it sounded like a “sonic boom from an airplane”. Coyne remarked that he looked up to the sky to try and spot the airplane, but didn’t see one.
The second explosion was closer to Coyne.
“I was about two blocks away and the noise was noticeably louder and soon after I heard it I thought ‘that’s not good,'” Coyne said.
After the second explosion, the runners reached Massachusetts Avenue, where police preventing them from going any further.
Coyne said it took about ten minutes once they were stopped to figure out what had happened.
“Everyone had cell phones, so word got out pretty quickly as people began checking the Internet for news,” he said.
Coyne said it took him about 2 1/2 hours to find his family after the events. Coyne expressed that people were running around borrowing cell phones from anyone who had one, trying to make contact with loved ones.
After seeing all he had seen through the day, Coyne summed up the event directly.
“It was crazy, scary and sad.”