George Scoville was one block away from the Boston Marathon’s finish line, inside the Lord & Taylor department store Monday afternoon when he felt two explosions rock the store within about “15 to 20 seconds” of one another.
“I was actually in a shopping mall right next to the finish line, Lord & Taylor, and heard an explosion and thought it was construction or building demolition,” the 33-year-old Scoville, a Washington, D.C. resident, told The Daily Caller in a phone interview from Boston Monday.
“You could feel it. There was a loud boom and then there was a second one that was even louder,” Scoville continued, explaining that the blasts shook the store. He then made his way for the door as people fled the scene of the nearby blast.
“I went outside because I saw people just take off running,” he relayed. “Spectators were just fleeing from where the finish line was.”
“Cop cars just started pouring in and firetrucks and everything. You could see a little bit of smoke and I tried to take some pictures and put them up on Instagram of like the storefronts there right by the finish line.”
Scoville uploaded about six shots of the scene to his Instagram account. The photos quickly made their way around the web alongside the hundreds of other pictures eyewitnesses began sharing.
“The glass was blown out and there were just people everywhere who had been right down there, and people crying everywhere.”
Scoville said he could see at least one emergency response team tending to someone on the ground outside before he made his way to his parents’ nearby hotel room.
“My brother ran the marathon and the whole family was down there. You know, we’re all fine and all that,” Scoville said.
According to the Associated Press, neither race officials nor public officials could immediately estimate the number or degree of injuries.
Will Rahn contributed to this report