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About Smoke signals. (Grand Ronde, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (May 1, 2013)
MOKE SIGNALS OS was si wdirw sD MAY 1,201 3 BOSTON continued from front page throughout the crowd. Three people were killed and more than 170 were injured. Several victims lost their legs in the blasts. "It was a very close call," Schultz says during a phone interview on Monday, April 22. "I felt dreadful and cold. The hairs stuck up on the back of my neck immediately after we found out from my girlfriend's mother that it was the finish line where the explosion was." A manhunt for the culprits start ed almost immediately, eventually shutting down one of the country's largest cities. Although he was not standing right there when the bombs went off and was not injured, Schultz says going through the experi ence was still eerie and something he will never forget. "It was a very scary event," he says. "Ev erything that went down last Monday, just being so close to it, that's probably the scariest thing I have ever experi enced in my life. "We were right across the street from where that first explosion was right by the finish line. Thankfully, we walked a couple blocks away in the wrong direction to find and meet up with some other friends." Despite leaving the finish line area, they were still close enough to hear the explosions. Phone calls from other friends and people run ning in the streets confirmed that the explosions were not a good thing as some people originally thought. Since it was also Patriot's Day in Massachusetts, some said they first thought the explosions could have been celebratory cannon fire. "After my girlfriend's mother called us to tell us and asked us if we were OK, that there were explo- 3 V ) sions at the finish line, all of us kind of turned silent. It was a very eerie feeling and our immediate reaction was to get out of the city. It was like fight-or-flight mode." Schultz says they were unsure if more bombs might explode in other parts of the city. "I'll tell you what, my emotions wanted to kick in, but my body wouldn't let them. All of us were very stone-faced, just walking, trying to get back to our cars as quickly as possible. It was a crazy feeling and something that I have never felt before." Schultz says he could feel the whole vibe of the city transform V. I v v y II illl k. .. HI 0 i Ad created by George Valdez '. v. t i '3! Photos by Jordon Schultz Tribal member Jordon Schultz and his girlfriend, Kendal Kubitz, attended the Boston Red Sox game vs. the Tampa Bay Rays in Fenway Park on Monday, April 1 5, the day of the bomb explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. While walking back to his car parked near Fenway Park following the explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, Tribal member Jordon Schultz took photos of the line of emergency vehicles trying to reach the site. Schultz, his girlfriend and two other friends were at the finish line about 10 minutes before the bombs exploded and left to go in search of other friends. after the explosions and as the news spread across the city, state and country. "It was very eerie watching the mood of the entire city change from everything is going on, it's a normal, great, patriotic, celebratory day to everyone huddling around TV sets at the nearest restaurant on the corner and being just shocked. People were in tears, sitting on the sides of the roads." As the manhunt for the perpe trators narrowed to two suspects - brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the city of Boston shut down on Friday., April 19. Although they do not live in Bos ton proper, Schultz said his and his girlfriend's jobs at a nearby mall were affected. "My girlfriend and I had to work at a local mall and not only were businesses not opening up in the mall because there were managers who could not open up their stores because they were in the area where the lockdown was and people were told to stay in their homes, but they ended up sending us home just because both of our companies ended up telling our managers that they wanted to be safe." When news arrived late on Fri day that Tamerlan was dead and Dzhokhar was in police custody, Schultz said he felt "joy, satisfac tion, overall happiness. I was ec static when I found out that they had arrested him." Schultz, who used to work at Portland radio station KXL 750 AM, moved to Boston in August to be near his girlfriend, who has family in Framingham, about 20 miles outside of the city, and to look for work. He currently is employed by Solaris, a cell phone company. He is the son of Kevin and Julie Schultz, and the grandson of An nabelle Ham. Schultz says he still thinks back to the seven minutes or so that could have changed his life. He acknowledges that if he had stayed at the finish line for much longer, he and his friends might not have been around to conduct an interview. Or, he says, "I might be talking to you from a hospital bed with shrapnel in me, or missing a foot or a leg. "I have to say, I didn't even go through the worst of it. My experi ence was so frightening and scary and awful, but I didn't experience nearly what thousands of other people experienced. I can't even be lieve the heartbreak they're going through right now and what they're having to deal with to get back to normal lives. My heart goes out to them. I was scared, but I and the people I was with didn't go through anything nearly as terrorizing as the people who were closer." Schultz says he still thinks about the fact that he might have walked by the Tsarnaev brothers while he was milling around the marathon finish line area as they carried their home made bombs in black backpacks.- "One of the surveillance cameras that they keep talking about in front of Lord & Taylor is the store that I was at," he says. "I was tell ing my girlfriend the other day, 'We were probably on that surveillance tape at one point.' That's creepy to think that we were that close to someone that evil." Schultz says he does not understand how someone can leave an explosive next to innocent bystanders. "He must have no soul," Schultz says. "A man, or a person, like that must have no soul because this man looked directly into the eyes of some of the victims that are now either dead or their legs were unfortu nately blown off, and he knew what was going to happen to them. I can't understand the evil in that person's mind. I'm such a happy person and I cannot begin to understand how someone can be OK or sleep at night after doing that. ... That kind of evil is just unspeakable to me and I can't believe people like that exist in this world." Schultz says that the Boston metropolitan area is getting back to normal a week later. "People are happy, but they're also questioning why. I think peo ple really want answers." But, he admits, the experience has left an indelible memory. "Even a week later, I will forever remember that day," Schultz says., "I can go back to any moment that day like I'm there with perfect clar ity. And, on top of that, experienc ing it with someone that I hope to make my wife someday was extra frightening." D
