The man in the hat at Boston Marathon finish line: Carlos Arredondo didn’t set out to be hero
Carlos Arredondo helps a victim of the Boston Marathon bombings on Monday. Photo: Charles Krupa / AP
John Newland
NBC News
4/16/2013
It’s an iconic image that captures a moment when one Boston Marathon bystander became much more.
With blood-soaked hands and wearing a cowboy hat, Carlos Arredondo helps rush a young man in a wheelchair to safety after explosions turned Monday’s race into a disaster scene.
He appears to be pinching closed a severed artery protruding from the victim’s thigh, stanching the flow of blood from a torn and shattered leg.
“I kept talking to him. I kept saying, ‘Stay with me, stay with me,'” Arredondo told the Portland, Maine, Press Herald.
Another frequently published photo shows him afterward, carrying an American flag soaked in blood.
Arredondo had been at the race to support a group running for fallen veterans, one of them his son, according to the Maine newspaper, which described him charging in to help the wounded after the explosions.
Afterward, he was shaking, sometimes violently, as he told bystanders what had happened.
Arredondo didn’t set out to become a heroic figure – or a tragic one, for that matter.
Life dealt the Costa Rica native the cards that brought him national media attention long before Monday…
The article continues at NBC News.
H/T Allahpundit and Freedom’s Lighthouse
Related: Former NE Patriot Joe Andruzzi carries injured woman from blast site
Former New England Patriot Joe Andruzzi tweeted his thanks to Boston’s first responders today, but he left out one detail: he too was one of the heroes of the day, carrying an injured woman to safety following today’s blast near the Boston Marathon finish line…
And more here.
…I suppose I should say the obvious: Improvised explosive designs are obviously not subject to patent and can be used by anyone. And people imitate other people’s “tech” (I suppose this is a form of technology). I don’t think that just because the bomb types were promoted by jihadis is any kind of strong proof that the bomber was a jihadi or read jihadi magazines. I’m pretty sure that the IRA, for example, knows all about this particular bomb type.
It’s marginally suggestive but only marginally…
Explosives Used at Boston Marathon Were Pressure Cooker Bombs
Update: Boston Marathon Massacre, I don’t understand What People Don’t Understand
…If you are surprised by any of this then you haven’t been paying a lot of attention for the last dozen years.
There are a lot of people who want to pretend evil doesn’t exist. It always has and always will.
Pretending that it doesn’t only serves to fool oneself and governing based on such a belief is irresponsible…
Da Techguy also warns his readers that bogus charities are already cropping up collecting contributions alleged to be for yesterday’s victims. Evil upon evil, imho.
Update 2: What “sense of safety”?
While in the car yesterday I was listening to some Boston-based talk shows, and I heard some people going on and on about their shock at what happened at the marathon, and how it destroyed the sense of safety they had prior to the blast.
I have a question for them: where were you on a certain sunny day in September, 2001?…
Some people are either very young or still asleep, it seems.
