Robert S. Ashby finished the Boston Marathon on Monday with a time of 2:43.

After he finished, twin explosions killed three people and injured more than 140 in an apparent terrorist attack.

Ashby, of Brunswick, was one of several Mainers in Boston when two bombs exploded near the finish line of the 117th Boston Marathon at approximately 2:50 p.m. Monday.

TV news stations reported that one of the 140 injured is a Falmouth teen attending college in Boston.

A family friend told WCSHTV the 18-year-old former Falmouth High School student sustained a broken leg, metal shrapnel injuries to her leg and lost hair. She is expected to recover.

Ashby’s wife, Fran Smith of Brunswick, told The Times Record that Ashby called her shortly after the blasts to report he and his 11-year-old daughter were both fine.

“Luckily, he called a while ago,” she said, “otherwise I’d be a lot more nervous than I am.”

“He called me,” Smith said, “and said, ‘Oh, by the way, did you hear about the explosions?’ He actually finished quite early and was almost back to the hotel when it happened.”

Smith said their 11-year-old daughter was watching the race from Mile 24, about 2 miles from the scene in the Back Bay section of downtown Boston where explosive devices erupted in twin balls of fire only a short distance from the finish line.

“I’m quite certain they were not anywhere close” to the incident, Smith said.

Ashby told The Times Record this morning he had hung around near the finish line, waiting on friends behind him.

“I was cheering people on for 15, 20 minutes, and I thought I must have missed my friends, so I walked to my hotel, which was two miles away.

“A friend of mine, Frank Kelly, called and asked if I had ‘heard that,’ and he said he thought ‘a bomb had gone off.’ I figured it was a propane tank or something, but another one went off right after and we just knew.

“I saw buses were shutting down the course, and people who had run 24 miles were being told to stop.

“They couldn’t believe it. I realized then that it was severe.”

Ashby, who has competed in the Boston Marathon several times, felt like something was taken from him and his fellow runners.

“It sickens me to think that a long tradition, 117 years, is taken away from us, stolen from me and my fellow runners,” said Ashby. “Normally, we get together and have a big after-party, celebrating the race. This year, we just wanted to get out of there.”

Ashby was one of 18 runners from Mid-coast Maine to compete in Monday’s race — perhaps the world’s premier distance race.

Kevin Steiner, a Brunswick High School graduate who now lives in New York, ran the marathon Monday and finished before the explosions. His wife, Janet, and their three daughters Delia, Maryellen and Deirdre, were waiting for him at the finish line. They planned to watch other runners finish, as well, but the children were so cranky that Janet took them back to the hotel to wait.

It may have saved their lives.

“The kids were watching cartoons to calm them down when it happened,” Steiner’s mother, Deirdre, said Tuesday morning. Afterward, Kevin and Janet had to explain what was happening to the oldest girl, Delia, who is seven.

“How do you tell a small child about something like that?” Deidre Steiner wondered. “But seeing their older sister calm down made the others calm, as well.”

Joan Benoit Samuelson, of Freeport, spoke to the Portland Press Herald while in lockdown at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel with son Anders and daughter Abby, with husband Scott standing nearby.

“I’m as baffled and confused and upset as everyone,” she told the Press Herald. “Thank God my family is all here.”

Samuelson said she was just coming out of the shower when her husband told her of the blasts.

“At first I thought it was a transformer,” she said. “They had a problem with that last year.”

Had it not been for a foot injury, Joanie Rhoda, 59, of Washington, Maine, could have been at the finish line when the bombs exploded.

“All of a sudden, it was like a traffic jam of runners,” Rhoda said a few hours after the explosions. “I thought it was a bottleneck of runners finishing but then they said, ‘You can’t go any further. Something’s happened.’ And then they said there had been a couple of explosions and you can’t finish.’”

In Boston to cheer for Rhoda were her husband, Paul Rhoda; her daughter, Erin Rhoda, editorial page editor for the Bangor Daily News; and Erin Rhoda’s fiance, Matthew Stone, a BDN political writer, who were closer to the finish line.

“We were near the finish line when there were two explosions. There was this gray smoke. It just reverberated through you. No one really knew what was going on,” Erin Rhoda said.

“There were lots of police and ambulances and firetrucks and hazardous waste trucks,” she said. “It was a madhouse, people were trying to find their loved ones. People were crying, not knowing what on earth had happened.”

Elana Johnson, a WZON radio announcer from Lincoln, also had a close call — as did her sons and a brotherin law from Colorado who ran in the marathon.

Johnson was making her way to the finish line — with her sons Richard Clifton Johnson, 18, and 16-year-old Andrew Johnson in tow — when she veered off to stop at a pharmacy.

“As we came out, I heard a boom and within seconds, another boom, and I looked at the boys and said, ‘What the hell is going on?’ And then everyone was running and freaking out,” she said during a telephone interview from her hotel room at the Hilton Boston Downtown/Faneuil Hall, where she and her sons were hunkered down.

“It was pretty much pandemonium. It was surreal,” she said.

Gov. Paul LePage said Maine Emergency Management Agency staff are on standby in case they are called to help.

LePage called it a very sad Patriot’s Day in Boston. He says he and his wife send their thoughts and prayers to the families and friends of those killed and injured in the “horrific acts of violence.”

Gary Allen was resting in the media center at the Copley Fairmount when the finish line was transformed into a crime scene.

“It was violent, violent,” said Allen, a Great Cranberry Island native who some 50 minutes earlier had completed the 26.2-mile race for the 21st time. “There was a heavy concussion that didn’t sound right, and it shook the building.

“Everybody in the media center stopped what they were doing in reporting the race and looked up, and maybe 10 seconds later there was a second explosion. It all felt angry and violent.

“There was police tape everywhere, and windows were blown out of buildings as high as four stories,” said Allen, who received media center access through his status as director of the Mount Desert Island Marathon. “There were ATF, police, SWAT teams, and there were helicopters hovering overhead.

“It was surreal.”

Allen, 56, who is recovering from an injury he suffered earlier this year while completing a 700-mile charity run from Maine to Washington, D.C., had expected to complete this year’s Boston race in about 4 hours but crossed the finish line on Boylston Street in 3 hours, 13 minutes, 56 seconds.

According to video taken at the finish line, the race clock was at just over 4 hours, 9 minutes when the first explosion occurred.

Allen said approximately 4,500 runners had passed the 25-mile mark but had not yet completed the race before the explosions took place. They were re-routed away from the finish line to the Boston Common.

“They never finished the race,” Allen said. “I’m still here in my running clothes, I haven’t showered and I’ve got my finishing medal around my neck, but I’d give it back in a heartbeat if everyone would be OK.”

TIMES RECORD staff writers Bob Conn, JT Leonard and Bob Mentzinger, Bangor Daily News reporters Dawn Gagnon and Ernie Clark, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

¦ EDITORIAL: Look
inside U.S. borders for
suspects, page A6
¦ MORE BOMBING
coverage, page A8
¦ RACE RESULTS,
page B3