One of the runners said there were a number of bomb-sniffing dogs at the start and finish line, which he thought was odd.
University of Mobile’s Cross Country Coach Ali Stevenson told Local 15: ‘They kept making announcements to the participants do not worry, it’s just a training exercise.’
He said the presence of law enforcement spotters on the roof at the start of the race also made the seasoned marathoner suspect police must have had some threat or suspicion called in.
But government officials deny this and say there were no warnings of any kind.
Stevenson had just finished the marathon before the explosions. His wife had been sitting in one of the seating sections where an explosion went off, but she had left her seat and was walking to meet up with him.
At Massachusetts General Hospital, Alasdair Conn, chief of emergency services, said: ‘This is something I’ve never seen in my 25 years here … this amount of carnage in the civilian population. This is what we expect from war.’
As police scurried to find leads that would lead them to the culprits, speculation grew that it looked more like a right-wing terrorist attack rather than al Qaeda-inspired extremism.