Funerals Begin for Victims of Boston Marathon Bombing
Hundreds of mourners crowded outside a suburban Boston church on Monday for the first of a series of funerals for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing.
The morning funeral of 29-year-old Krystle Campbell was the first since the April 15 attack at the race’s finish line, which killed three people and injured more than 170.
The suspected bombers are also believed to have fatally shot a security guard at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Thursday night before a gun battle with police and day-long manhunt that left most of the Boston area locked down.
Some in the crowd outside St. Joseph’s Church in Medford said they had driven as far as 100 miles (160 km) to attend the funeral, where officials including Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick were in attendance.
As she waited for the funeral, Renee Arsenault, a 28-year-old hairdresser, said she had gone to middle school with Campbell.
“I am so happy this many people showed up in her honor,” Arsenault said.
The hearse carrying Campbell’s red-tinted casket was escorted by about 20 police motorcycles and an honor guard of uniformed law enforcement officers stood in front of the church as pallbearers carried the casket in.
The marathon draws about 27,000 runners each year and hundreds of thousands of spectators, making it one of Boston’s best-attended sporting events and one that many area residents have some personal connection to.
Renee’s mother, Leslie, recalled her daughter standing along the finish line near the bombing site in 2000, cheering her on when she ran the race.
“My daughter stood exactly where the first bomb went off,” Leslie Arsenault said.
Campbell’s funeral was the first of the memorial events planned for the day. Patrick and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino had called for the public to observe a moment of silence at 2:50 p.m. (1850 GMT), to mark one week since the bombing. Boston University scheduled a 7 p.m. (2300 GMT) memorial service for graduate student Lu Lingzi, who also died in the blast.
The governors of nearby states including Connecticut, New Hampshire and Maine also said they would observe the moment of silence.
No public funeral has yet been scheduled for the bombing’s youngest victim, Martin Richard, or for Sean Collier, a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology police who the two suspected bombers gunned down on Thursday night.
Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was in custody at a Boston hospital on Monday after being apprehended on Friday night. He was badly injured in a gun battle with police that led to the death of his older brother Tamerlan, 26.
Outside the Medford funeral, Chuck Walsh, a retired custodian from Medford High School, said he had driven 100 miles from Ossipee, New Hampshire, for the funeral of Campbell, who he remembered calling him “Mr. Chuck” in her school days.
“It was travesty what happened,” Walsh said.
