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Southern Alumna Reports on the Boston Marathon Blasts

Southern Accent, the student paper of Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, Tenn., reports on a local alumna who ran in the Boston Marathon. 

Jessica Marlier, ’10, an avid runner and Hixson middle school teacher, told the Southern Accent how she heard a sound like “a deep crack of thunder” after running in the Boston Marathon Monday.

 

 

“It’s terrible and I’m just kind of in shock. I can’t believe it happened,” Marlier said.

 

The two booms she heard turned out to be a terror attack four blocks away, right at the same finish line Marlier crossed just an hour earlier at the famed race that draws tens of thousands to Boston each April.

 

 

“My training partner and I were hanging out in a local park around 4 blocks away and I was just laying down because I was tired and sore,” she said. “I heard the explosions and I thought maybe a generator blew.”

“It was strange because we heard a lot of ambulances and fire trucks. We got our stuff  and we walked down to the nearest subway station. We had to walk an extra mile because they had some of the lines blocked off,” Marlier said.

 

“Then my phone started going crazy and people started calling. We stopped at a store window to watch a TV and that’s how we found out.”

 

“The police are encouraging us not to leave our hotels and go out,” Marlier, 27, said.

 

 

Marlier said she knew at least fifteen people from the Chattanooga area that participated in this year’s Marathon, but that most had already finished the race when the bombings occurred.

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