Triangle runners recall fear, want answers in Boston attack

“I do wonder what it would have been like for me sitting in the bleachers, what would have happened,” said Rachmuth, a Triangle resident who was at the Boston Marathon to support her husband, Guy Rachmuth, who was running in the race.

Sloan Rachmuth left her seat to have lunch and was rushing back when one of the bombs exploded.

“It was very scary,” Guy Rachmuth said. “It was the scariest part of the whole thing.”

The Rachmuths kept an eye on the news Friday as the FBI showed the massive manhunt for suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whose older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed in an overnight shootout with police.

“Our friends are in Cambridge. They’re on lockdown – very traumatized,” Sloan Rachmuth said.

North Carolina State University graduate students Lauren Pilcher and Christina Blyde also were in Boston for the race.

“It’s been a crazy week since I got back,” Pilcher said. “I feel like I left a different world.”

Blyde added: “It’s very upsetting that one of the police officers was already killed. Those are people putting themselves on the line.”

Authorities on Friday had not yet established a motive for the attack, and the runners had different opinions about why it happened.

“We want this information,” Blyde said. “We want to know why he’s doing this and what his motives are.”

Sloan Rachmuth said the motive is “not worth analyzing.”