The time was 2:49 PM. The race, the 114th edition of it, was won by Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia, in 2 hours, 10 minutes and 22 seconds; and, on the women's side, Rita Jeptoo of Kenya in 2:26:25. Jeptoo had previously won in 2006, and would again in 2014, but was stripped of the 2014 title for doping. Desisa would win again in 2015.
The winners crossed the finish line about 3 hours before the bombing. Desisa donated his winner's medal to the City of Boston, as a tribute to the victims.
The final count was 3 dead, 264 others injured. The perpetrators were a pair of ethnic Chechen brothers who had fled Russia, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Muslims angry at the continued U.S. military action in Afghanistan.
Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from nearby Medford, Massachusetts, was killed by the 1st bomb. The 2nd bomb killed Lü Lingzi, 23, a Chinese citizen and a graduate student at Boston University; and Martin Richard, 8, from the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston.
The brothers then claimed a 4th victim, killing Sean Collier, 27, a campus policeman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) across the Charles River in Cambridge, and stole a car. They got as far as Watertown, about 6 miles west of the bomb site, but the police caught up with them, and shot them both. Tamerlan, 26 years old, died at the scene. Dzhokhar, 19, was wounded, but got away, made it to a boat on a trailer, and was found by the police, barely alive.
He was tried and convicted, and sent to, and remains in, ADX Florence, the "supermax" federal prison in Colorado. Also there: "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski, 1993 World Trade Center bombing "mastermind" Ramzi Yousef, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols, Olympic Park and abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph, "20th 9/11 hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui, "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, and FBI/GRU double agent Robert Hanssen. No one has ever escaped from this prison.
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Every year, on the 3rd Monday in April, New England, and in particular the State -- excuse me, the Commonwealth -- of Massachusetts, celebrates Patriot's Day. They commemorate the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the start of the War of the American Revolution. (Lexington Green is 14 miles northwest of Boston's Downtown Crossing.)
On this day, the nation's oldest long-distance race is conducted, the Boston Marathon. So as to avoid the combination of traffic that would be generated by a Red Sox home game and street closures for the Marathon, on Patriot's Day, the Red Sox play the Major League Baseball season's only morning game, at Fenway Park, an 11:05 AM start.
The Sox had completed their game before the bombing, and beat the Tampa Bay Rays, 3-2. Jarrod Saltalamacchia had hit a home run, but the Sox blew a 2-1 lead in the top of the 9th inning. In the bottom of the 9th, with 1 out, Dustin Pedroia drew a walk, and Mike Napoli doubled him home with the winning run.
The Red Sox would ride the slogan "Boston Strong" -- and the steroids of David Ortiz -- to win the World Series in 2013. This was 4 years after Ortiz had been exposed as a cheat, yet was continued to be allowed to play, and was even awarded the Series' Most Valuable Player award, as the Sox beat the St. Louis Cardinals in 6 games.
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