Alex Fitzpatrick2013-04-16 17:07:31 UTCA Boston Marathon volunteer who claims to have been near ground zero of Monday's deadly explosions has been sharing intimate details of his experience on Reddit under the pseudonym "Zadmxm." Zadmxm's account of the blasts, if authentic, reveals a volunteer whose medical training kicked in during a time of crisis, driving him to assist others while disregarding his own safety.
"We heard and felt two loud pops (think dropping a huge textbook onto a hardwood floor)," wrote Zadmxm, who said he is CPR/AED and first aid certified and was with a friend about one block from the finish line at the time of the explosions. "She thought explosion immediately, I wrote it off as a something falling. A cluster of police near us immediately alerted and started checking their radios. We heard the words two explosions come out of the radios and saw them start sprinting towards the finish line, vaulting barricades on the way."
Zadmxm is refusing to identify himself or give more formal interviews. He offered a photo of his race volunteer identification badge stripped of his name as evidence of his claims (he is not depicted in the above photo).
Zadmxm did, however, reveal he was operating as a general volunteer and not serving in a medical role and that he was a former runner taken out of the sport by a leg injury sustained earlier in life. After the explosions, he said he immediately began helping to direct marathon runners and spectators while also clearing obstacles out of arriving medical vehicles' paths.
"It wound up being three hours of controlled chaos of directing runners, families, spectators, media and constantly clearing the intersection on a moment's notice for what must have been over 100 emergency vehicles," wrote Zadmxm. "When [the Boston Police Department] was fully mobilized, the volunteers were dismissed and I went home with the rest of the teams."
Zadmxm told one Redditor the two explosions "sounded pretty much identical." When asked if he feared additional blasts, he said that "crossed my head" but he "really didn't think of it for long enough."
"To me, the possibility of getting injured is less important than the potential for helping others already injured," he wrote. More than 170 people were injured Monday with three fatalities thus far.
"Things like this will always bring out the heroes in everybody," reflected Zadmxm, who said he quit Reddit last year but returned to "get my thoughts on metaphorical paper so I can look back on this in the future."
"I saw people do incredible things, runners finishing one of the hardest races out there and then going and donating blood, turning around and helping coordinate our efforts, bomb squad guys rushing straight into an explosive situation," he added. "Every last person who did something good today is, in my mind, a hero for going so far above and beyond what they'd signed up to do."
Image via John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
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