My Brother’s Classmate Was One of The Boston Marathon Bombers

“I smoked weed with a terrorist.”

Nicole Kenney
3 min readApr 28, 2023
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As the tenth anniversary rolled around of the Boston Marathon Bombings, I can’t help but think back on that day, that week.

I was in seventh grade, only 45 minutes south of Boston. I was packing to leave for a school trip to Washington D.C. that night for five days. I vividly remember scrolling through social media, and suddenly seeing a stream of posts of people sending their prayers to Boston.

Confusion filled my mind until I turned on the TV. Instantly, recaps of buildings blowing up and marathon runners falling to the ground at the finish line are on every news station.

It was shocking, yet confusing. No terrorist attack has happened like this in years. Why now? Why the Boston Marathon?

Less than a day later, my brother (a 20-year-old college student at the time) walked through the door with nothing but his wallet and car keys. My mom asked what he was doing at home all of a sudden. All he said was he had to evacuate his campus. Security wouldn’t even let him pack a bag.

My brother was a current student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, in the same year as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Who Is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev?

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Nicole Kenney

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