A Winnipeg doctor and his wife had a close brush with the Boston Marathon bombings, and some desperate moments trying to find each other amid the chaos.
Dr. Robert Steinberg was just 2 blocks from the finish line, a few seconds’ run from the twin explosions that rocked the event Monday afternoon.
“I heard a sound and a huge puff of smoke or steam or something about 30, 40 feet across,” Steinberg told Global News Wednesday. Seconds later, another blast even closer to where he was standing.
And while hundreds ran for safety, Steinberg only had one thing on his mind.
“The only thought that went through my mind when I saw the barriers was I want to finish this race,” he said. But the race had come to a sudden and chaotic end.
And Steinberg had no clue where his wife was. She snapped a photo of him as he passed by at mile 21, but that was the last time they’d seen each other.
“She was going to meet me after the end of the race,” he said. The couple raced to find each other through the crowd of thousands.
“What if he’s hurt, I’ve to get there,” Julie Gold Steinberg recalls. “I’m really panicking, and I start running again, and I hear my name and I look up — and my husband is there.” The two had stumbled across each other in a shopping mall where authorities had herded panicked racers and spectators after the blasts.
But after their brief moment of relief came anger.
“You don’t do this to innocent people, to spectators, you don’t do this to runners,” says Steinberg. “There were 13 people with amputations from this. That’s not ok.. they have to catch him or her whoever it was and get them.”
The doctor is grateful that the Boston race authorities sent him a race finisher’s medal. But he is determined that he will be back next year to finish the race for real, regardless of his fears.
“I’m going to be watching I can feel it already I’m going to be watching every trash can, I’m going to be watching every manhole cover and every newspaper box,” he says.
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