What was supposed to be a cross-country trip to attend the Boston Marathon with friends, turned out to be a reportable moment for Sachem alum Alycia Lane.
Lane, a morning news anchor for NBC4 of Los Angeles, was having lunch at Lenox Hotel on Exeter Street in Boston when explosions rocked the Marathon.
“We could feel the ground shake below us, and everything on our table shook,” Lane told Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News. “Ten seconds later, a second blast hit and we looked outside and saw a plume of smoke up in the air. We saw the building across from the spectator stands, which was a mirrored tall office building, shaking. And that’s when panic struck everyone in that restaurant.”
Lane said police told her and other bystanders to turn their cell phones off so no devices would accidentally detonate any other explosives remotely.
“That sent us into further panic,” she said. “We then just watched the news and all of us felt pretty helpless at that point.”
A patron at the restaurant Lane was eating at instructed everyone inside to head towards the back, away from the glass. Lane said people were running in and out looking for loved ones.
“Nobody knew it there was another blast on the way or if potentially our hotel was going to be a target,” she said.
Later in the day, she posted a photo to her Instagram account that painted a grimm picture of what transpired.
“Haven’t had time to process yet,” wrote Lane. “Not going to be easy.”
VIDEO: Watch Alycia Lane talk live from the scene in Boston
-Words by Chris R. Vaccaro