RICHMOND, Va. -- Two Richmond runners who crossed the finish line at the Boston Marathon minutes before the bombs detonated two years ago, said a jury’s decision to convict Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on all 30 counts was bittersweet.
“Part of my heart felt relief, and part of my heart felt more broken because this could have been avoidable,” Katherine Hopper, who ran the Boston Marathon in 2013.
Hopper stood engulfed in a warming blanket at the finish of the marathon moments after the bombs exploded as a news photographer snapped her picture.
“The majority of my friends found out I was ok because they looked on CNN and saw this picture here,” Hopper said while pointing to a CNN photo.
She sat in the medical tent for thirty minutes after she finished the race and received treatment for overheating when she heard a lout noise and then saw something she will never forget.
“They brought this man in, he was missing both of his legs right above the knees, you could just see the white bone,” Hopper said.
Hopper said it remains unsettling that Tsarnaev’s brother, Tamerlan, who set the bombs with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but died soon after, is buried not far from Richmond in Caroline County.
Fellow Richmond runner, Chuck Coli, finished the Boston Marathon that year one minute before the bombs detonated.
“It brings back some, it was an uncomfortable time,” Coli said about Wednesday’s verdict.
He said the jury made the right call, but he is now focused on the finish line in the case, Tsarnaev’s sentence.
“Where it goes from here I’m not sure, but I think justice will be done,” Coli said.
CBS 6 spoke with the Islamic Funeral Services of Virginia, which is the group that secured the plot for Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s burial in Caroline County.
A representative of the organization said they are not even discussing if they would try to bring Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to the same grave site at this point.
