2:55 p.m. Monday April 15th my phone rings and everything was about to change.

It was my friend Brett down near the finish line of the Boston Marathon saying that he saw and heard two massive explosions. At first I thought maybe he was talking about a celebratory cannon going off  or something like that..but I was wrong, Boston was under attack.

10 Minutes later  I was with my photographer Trung driving down Columbus Ave. in the South End watching people run from the back bay. Others were standing on street corners, some with this strange look on their faces. They had witnessed something awful and their lives would never be the same.

I looked out the window to the right and saw this girl laying on the ground being comforted by her boyfriend. She was having convulsions & couldn’t even talk about the horror she had watched play out before her eyes.

Just behind her two women were sitting on the steps of a house. I will never forget the stunned looks they had on their faces. They shared with me what they had lived through just minutes ago. They told me that they were across the street from the explosions and saw things they will never be able to forget.  I was finally able to reach the station after repeated attempts on my cell phone. The cell towers were so overwhelmed by the number of people trying to call their loved ones. Once I got through I did a live phone interview with the station & put one of the ladies on with me so she could share her story.

We then headed closer to the scene of the explosions but we couldn’t make it past the police tape near Huntington. What we saw there was remarkable. Perfect strangers offering to help runners and spectators. Whether they needed directions, bathrooms, food or even a place to come in and warm up the people of Boston stepped up in a ways that truly warms your heart.

We found an older woman who was just sitting there very cold & my top notch crew invited her to come sit in the live truck with us to stay warm. Turns out she lives in one of the hotels that was being evacuated. She truly had nowhere to go. Once things calmed down, my photographer and truck operator slowly helped her to another hotel where she could spend the night.

Those are the images I’ll take away from the past two days.I’ll also remember the kind words people would say when walking up to us at the scene. The offers of coffee & bathrooms will never be forgotten.

I always knew Boston was a proud & hard working city but these past two days I’ve been reminded of how STRONG Boston is.

Where were you around 1:54 pm yesterday? I was in the shower getting ready for work when my phone started going nuts. Text messages… incoming tweets.. everybody was asking me.. did you feel that earthquake? What? Excuse me? Was this some kind of prank all my friends were playing on me?  I didn’t feel a THING!

Sure enough… I turned on 7NEWS and there it was.. a 5.8 magnitude quake had hit in Virginia and  we felt the tremor right here in New England. Once i realized what was going on.. I quickly got my suit on and rushed into the station. On the way i kept getting text messages from people all over the area & country for that matter. In this ultra fast paced ..twitterized world news of this rare east coast tremor had spread like wild fire. Friends here in Boston sent me pictures of huge crowds of people sitting outside their high rise office buildings wondering if there were gonna be aftershocks. Once I got to the station I walked in the newsroom and literally went right on tv.

Jeremy Reiner had been doing an amazing job covering this quake non stop since the news broke telling everyone what was going on. I joined him on air and we started to get some information about the FAA grounding airlines in NYC, DC & Philly. Some of those flights were diverted here to Logan. The reaction was the same from most people.. is this really happening? On the east coast?

The good news is that there was no damage or injuries here in New England. However down in Virginia and DC some buildings including the Washington monument suffered some damage from the shaking.

So no I didn’t feel it… but that initial shaking rattled many nerves across the eastern seaboard.

We are weeks away from the 10th anniversary  of 9/11 and many didn’t know what was going on… let’s be happy it wasn’t something else.

It really has been a BUSY time in the news business. In the past year I’ve covered  A hurricane… multiple blizzards.. bin Laden’s death. .Whitey Bulger’s capture.. Tornados slamming Western MA..& The Bruins.

I’m scared to ask what’s next?

Ry

The

We were at the Boston Common Theatre interviewing die hard Harry Potter fans who were camped out in line waiting for the big finale in the famous line of movies when the phone rang. My assignment desk manager Ben Dobson simply said “get to logan now.. two planes have collided.”  The statement  immeadiately diverted my  attention from what I was working on to how can we find the fastest way to Logan. my photographer Dusty Wood and I quickly packed up everything and drove right for the top of central parking at Logan. This is the perfect spot to see most of the runways at Logan. We zoomed up 5 floors of parking till we reached the top. We pulled up right to the side of the parking garage wall and saw all the emergency lights surrounding a small regional jet. The damage to it’s tail was very visible.  We shot video and I jumped on Twitter to update everyone on the breaking news. After we got enough video we raced back down to Terminal A to interview all the passengers that had been on the smaller jet & the big 767 that had collided with it. The FAA says the 767 & smaller jet were both taxing to take off when the big jet’s wing clipped the tail of the smaller jet. Passengers told us of the jolt they felt when they two jets collided. One passenger on the 767 quickly took a picture of the damage to the wing on his plane .. the picture is posted below. After we all interviewed that passenger i had her send it to my phone and i got that pic up on twitter right away.  We continued to interview passengers and gather elements but the clock was ticking. It was now 9:15 pm and we had to get out to the live truck to edit what we had for the 10pm news.

It was pretty amazing how Twitter played a big role in this breaking news.. take a look at this story about how the Boston TV stations relied on Twitter to get the breaking news out about this breaking story at Logan.. they actually used one of my tweets from last night!

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvspy/boston-stations-utilize-social-media-to-report-on-plane-collision-at-logan-airport_b15062

Ry

As a kid I loved t-storms. I would sit outside until the last possible minute watching the storm clouds roll in. There is nothing like the smell the air has before a big storm hits. The wet, heavy air with that damp smell meant it was close. Today after spending time in Boston covering two big court cases Whitey Bulger & Clark Rockefeller I was sent west to chase some possibly severe weather that was set to move in. My photographer Trung Dang and I got to Leominster around 7:30 and watched in awe as the storm clouds rolled in. They were pitch black and ominous looking. I’ll post some pictures below of what it looked like. It still is such a thrill to watch a major storm come racing in!
Ry

We lined up hours before it was set to happen. Every news outlet in Boston had at least two people ready to sit inside the federal courtroom where Whitey Bulger was set to make his 2nd appearance. This hearing was suppose to be about who would represent him.. a public defender or would he have to hire someone himself. The hearing never got that far. More on that in second. As we were ushered into the courtroom the 29 media that were allowed to sit in the courtroom crunched into the wood benches. some had laptops ready to tweet as the hearing went on. I was planning on using my iPhone to tweet but sadly i couldn’t get any service. Some of the courtrooms in federal court I’ve had service before.. but not this one. It was so amazing to watch as all these reporters chatted amongst ourselves. This is the biggest story to hit boston in many years and everyone has thoughts.. sources.. & personal experiences about this case. The topics ranged from who the judge would be for the actual trial to who would actually represent Bulger. In court we all noticed two of Boston’s big named attorneys sitting behind us: Howard Cooper & Max Stern. The speculation was these two would represent Bulger very soon. They had nothing to say on the matter.

Finally after all the waiting.. Whitey Bulger walked in. He was wearing an Orange jump suit from the Plymouth house of corrections and he walked straight forward and looked at no one. In his previous appearances Whitey had been very animated.. but this time he was very serious. I remember thinking when i saw him how much he looked like your everyday grandfather in handcuffs. He was wearing glasses and had his grey beard. The hearing went on and i couldn’t help but watch Bulger the entire time.. along with every other reporter in the room. You wanted to watch every movement to see if he would turn around and maybe do something. He never did. Every so often he chatted with his lawyer but that was it. The hearing about who his actual attorney would be was sidetracked by the government dismissing the 1994 racketeering indictment against Bulger to focus on the 19 murder charges.

AFter about 25 minutes the hearing was over and he was led away in cuffs. I will for sure never that moment.. being so close to the man wanted by so many for so long.

Ry

I had just walked into my apartment and the phone rang.. They just arrested Whitey Bulger in Santa monica & we need you to get back to the station as soon as possible. This was one of those “news” moments we all live for. I had the same feelings the night President Obama announced Bin Laden was dead. As I did then — I ran back to 7NEWS– ready for a long night– into the morning. The newsroom was buzzing when I walked in. This was the biggest story to hit Boston since maybe the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy. We all went to work right away to begin preparing to cover the big arrest. I was in the newsroom from 12am until 5 am writing stories & getting ready for the morning show. Then when 5 am hit it was all Whitey .. All the time. We stayed on covering the story until 8:15am. At that point I headed home to get some sleep. At 2 pm I woke up– showered and came back into the station to continue the big coverage.
It was one of those days I will never forget & why I love my job.
Ry

It was a busy Tuesday. I arrived to work to be sent right out the door to Melrose. A Toyota had crashed into a Rite Aid on Main St & people were hurt. Sky 7 had been up above the scene well before I got there and was able to capture the video of the car in the store & then being pulled out. By the time we got there.. there was tons of traffic.. the car was gone… it was 3:20 and I was needed live at 4pm. I gathered as much information as i could from the fire fighters who remained on the scene. they painted a picture of a wild scene.. the 76 year old male driver somehow lost control of the car.. it jumped the curb.. and slammed into the store. This sent debris flying everywhere, trapping one worker. Buddy Cummings who lives across the street happened to be jogging by and he saw the crash.. he didn’t think twice and ran into the store to help. He pretty much directed the rescue effort in the first few minutes after the crash. He helped moved the counter where the female employee was trapped. In all 3 female workers were injured in the crash… the driver was also taken to the hospital. Everyone is expected to be ok.. the cause of the crash remains under investigation. In the middle of this breaking news.. we were told of another breaking story not far away in Malden. We quickly packed up our live truck & equipment and raced to what we were being told was an armored truck robbery. When we arrived it was clear that was not the case.. state police in fact say someone robbed the Brookline Bank and ran out of the store but no armored cars were involved so we then headed back to Melrose to continue covering the rite aid crash. Busy, busy Tuesday!

Ry

Buddy Cummings-- The Good Samaritan

The hole where the car busted through at Rite Aid

I can’t remember the last time I had two weeks off in a row.. it’s probably been more than 8 years. The vacation was a great time to take a nice break from work and I enjoyed every minute of it. That being said anyone who knows me will tell you I’m not good at sitting still so I was more than ready to get back to work.

My story on the first day back was a woman who was at her friend’s Quincy apartment when a bullet came blasting through the ceiling and slammed into her hand! She didn’t even know she had been shot until she arrived at the hospital and they told her she had a bullet lodged in her hand.  Police say her friend’s upstairs neighbor is in big trouble for firing the shot. I put the story together and then we edited it for the 10&11 pm news. It was a little strange voicing the piece after being off for two weeks.. but after a few tracks (the part of the story where the reporter talks) i was back in the swing of things.

Now we will see what day 2 brings. Have a great day!

Ry