JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – As jury selection for one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects gets underway, Northeast Florida runners who witnessed the bombings in April 2013 said they remain traumatized from the experience.
Several runners said they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder because of the bombings.
One Jacksonville man, David Green, was the first to run up to a little girl right after her leg was blown off. Her brother was killed in the bombings.
Green said he typically knows how to react in tough situations but the bombings left him frozen. But he did manage to take a picture (shown), which eventually helped put suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on trial.
Green said the second bomb went off right in front of him, just after he finished the marathon.
"It was a sensory overload of smells and sounds and people screaming and running at you, so you knew pretty quickly it was not good," Green recalled.
Jennifer Hernandez (pictured below), who grew up in Jacksonville, was studying at Harvard at the time. She was 11 weeks pregnant watching marathon finishers when the bombs went off. She ran to her husband's hotel.
"Watching ambulances from every county surrounding Boston fly by, followed by armored trucks, tanks, SWAT teams filed in and squad cars," Hernandez said. "It was just chaos for the longest time. We were trapped downtown for about nine hours."
In the midst of the chaos, Green snapped a crucial photo.
"Everybody was fleeing," Green said. "And in that moment I just grabbed my phone and took one picture -- and had no idea that the suspect No. 2 (Tsarnaev) was actually in the photo -- and then put it back and ran in to see if I could help somebody."
Many still suffer from the trauma that day.
"I have really bad nightmares and flashbacks," Hernandez said. "I can't be left home alone. I'll have an anxiety attack. I was always a dreamer and an artist and goofy, and I would say anything to make people who I love laugh, and it has completely changed the way I look at the world."
Runners said they're thankful the suspect is about to go to trial, and they hope to learn more about why Tsarnaev and his brother wanted to terrorize a city that's become Boston Strong.
"My personal philosophy is to live in the moment, really just make time slow down and make the most of every second that you have," Green said. "And luckily in that one second I was able to do something that was helpful to the people in the crisis situation."
Hernandez and her family returned to Jacksonville and started a local nonprofit organization that helps her through PTSD. If you'd like to donate, you can go to GiveForward.com and search "Project Heal and Rebuild."
Every dollar beyond their goal will be donated to the MS Foundation and to organizations that specialize in PTSD treatment.