8.Alan Hern — Direct
192 linesALAN HERN, duly sworn
COURT CLERK: Have a seat. State your name and spell your last name for the record and keep your voice up and speak into the mic.
ALAN HERN: Okay. Alan Hern, H-E-R-N.
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. MELLIN:
MR. MELLIN: Good morning, Mr. Hern.
ALAN HERN: Good morning.
MR. MELLIN: Where do you live?
ALAN HERN: In Martinez, California.
MR. MELLIN: And where did you grow up?
ALAN HERN: In Martinez, California.
MR. MELLIN: At some point did you go to college?
ALAN HERN: I did. I went to the United States Naval Academy in 1989.
MR. MELLIN: Did you graduate from the Naval Academy?
ALAN HERN: Yeah, in 1993.
MR. MELLIN: And did you have a roommate back then that you still keep in touch with?
ALAN HERN: Yeah. My roommate was Luis Yepez. He's from Paxton, Massachusetts, and he now lives in Andover.
MR. MELLIN: And Mr. Yepez is Y-E-P-E-Z. Is that right for the record?
ALAN HERN: Correct, yeah.
MR. MELLIN: At some point did you leave the Navy?
ALAN HERN: I did. I left in October of 1998, and then I started working as a defense contractor for Space and Naval Warfare Systems command in San Diego because we were still stationed in San Diego. Then we moved back up to the San Francisco area after about a year.
MR. MELLIN: And as you sit here today, how are you employed?
ALAN HERN: I'm a teacher.
MR. MELLIN: And are you also a coach as well?
ALAN HERN: I'm the varsity football coach at my high school, yes.
MR. MELLIN: Do you have a family?
ALAN HERN: I have a wife, I have three children. Erin is 13 and my daughter is 12, Abigail, and then Caroline is 16 months old.
MR. MELLIN: In April of 2013 did you decide to come to Boston?
ALAN HERN: We did. My wife had qualified for the Boston Marathon. We had run the San Francisco Marathon together in July of 2012 and she qualified. And we actually weren't going to come because it was expensive, and with the children. And we just kind of kicked it around for a long time. And actually, she missed the deadline to sign up and just got on -- we decided to do it anyway, and we ended up coming out for the race.
MR. MELLIN: When did you actually come to Boston?
ALAN HERN: We came a few days before because we wanted to visit with the Yepezes. We don't see them very often being on the other side of the country. So we decided to kind of make a reunion of it and we stayed with them at their house. And they kind of helped us with the logistics of getting down to the race and going to the expo.
MR. MELLIN: And when you say that you came here, who came with you?
ALAN HERN: The whole family came. At the time Katherine was pregnant with Caroline. She was three months pregnant.
MR. MELLIN: Yet she was still going to run the race?
ALAN HERN: Right, yeah.
MR. MELLIN: All right. On the morning of April 15th, 2013, what did you do?
ALAN HERN: We got to the race, we parked. We had to kind of walk pretty far to get to -- because there were so many people. We staked out a place closer to the finish line. We were right near where all the flags were. We actually were right near where LensCrafters and the sports store and the Candy Heaven. We bought some candy for the kids. They were playing catch. The sidewalk is really wide on that part of the street. Lou's wife, Gisela, she put a chair up and she just kind of set up a place for us there so everybody else could kind of move around. And we were there for probably, like, three hours. We decided to -- Lou and I were taking pictures, and we decided to walk up the street and around to Hereford to watch the female elite runners come in and take pictures, and that's when we noticed that there was less of a crowd farther up Boylston. So we made our way back down to the rest of the group and we told them, "Hey, let's go up the street and find a little easier place to see." So then we walked up the street, and that's how we ended up near the Forum restaurant and the Atlantic Fish Company.
MR. MELLIN: And from what you described, the first location you were at was actually the location where later the first bomb would go off?
ALAN HERN: Right where it was, yes.
MR. MELLIN: And then you moved down to the Forum area after that?
ALAN HERN: Correct.
MR. MELLIN: All right. By the time you got to the area around the Forum, who was with you?
ALAN HERN: My son Aaron; Lou's son David. They were standing together just kind of on the other -- we were probably 12 or 15 feet away, Lou and I. And then Gisela was on the other side of us, and my daughter was close with me, Abigail.
MR. MELLIN: In April of 2013, how old was Aaron?
ALAN HERN: Aaron was 11. His birthday is on May 1st, so he was going to be 13 [sic] after the race.
MR. MELLIN: And do you know how old David was?
ALAN HERN: David, I believe, was a freshman in high school at the time.
MR. MELLIN: Were you keeping track of your wife on the run?
ALAN HERN: We were. We had the -- we had signed up for the text messages, so we knew where she was at different checkpoints throughout the race. I was worried about her because she was pregnant. I mean, she had been training. We had run two marathons before this, and the doctor said it was fine for her to do it because she had been training. But still, it was a concern. But she was doing really well. She was doing better than I thought she would, actually. So we kind of had an idea about when she was going to come across our location.
MR. MELLIN: Just prior to the second explosion, do you know where she was located?
ALAN HERN: Not exactly because I think the last checkpoint we had was farther down the course. So we were just guessing about how far she was away and about when that would put her where we were at. So I really had no idea exactly where she was.
MR. MELLIN: Had she finished at that point?
ALAN HERN: No. She told me later that she'd turned the corner, Hereford onto Boylston. She was thinking how thankful she was for how things had worked out for our family, that things were going well with the baby, that she felt good, and that's when the bombs went off, when she was coming down Boylston.
MR. MELLIN: If I could just for the witness, your Honor, have the witness look at Exhibit 29.
MR. MELLIN: Do you see Exhibit 29 in front of you, Mr. Hern?
ALAN HERN: Yes.
MR. MELLIN: Do you recognize what that is?
ALAN HERN: That's the location of the second bomb, where we were standing.
MR. MELLIN: Who do you see in that photograph?
ALAN HERN: That's my son Aaron.
MR. MELLIN: We're going to get back to that in just a minute. If you can just for the record say who you see in that photograph.
ALAN HERN: Okay. My son Aaron, David. I see Jane Richard, Martin Richard, Bill Richard, Denise Richard.
MR. MELLIN: All right. Let me ask you: Is that a fair and accurate photograph of April the 15th, 2013, in front of the Forum?
ALAN HERN: Yes.
MR. MELLIN: Your Honor, at this time we would move into evidence Exhibit 29 and ask that it be published.
THE COURT: Any objection?
MR. BRUCK: No objection.
THE COURT: Okay. Admitted.
(Government Exhibit No. 29 received into evidence.)
MR. MELLIN: All right, Mr. Hern. I've had a bad habit today of having people jump ahead of me. You had already circled where Aaron was. Now if we could just do that again.
ALAN HERN: Sure. Right there and right there. That's Aaron.
MR. MELLIN: And for the record, you've circled a young boy who's on a fence line about four children down from the left of that photograph?
ALAN HERN: Correct.
MR. MELLIN: All right. Can you see Abigail in this photograph?
ALAN HERN: No, Abigail was with me. There's another tree that's up the street about 12 or 15 feet, and she's standing near by me at that spot.
MR. MELLIN: And do you see Mr. Yepez in this photograph?
ALAN HERN: No. He was with me also next to the other tree.
MR. MELLIN: And what about David?
ALAN HERN: David is right here. That's him (indicating).
MR. MELLIN: All right. And for the record, you circled -- let me just clear these, but you circled the person standing next to your son, to the right of your son in this photograph?
ALAN HERN: Correct.
MR. MELLIN: All right. Now, you said you were not in this photograph. As you look at this photograph, how far down were you from the edge of this photograph?
ALAN HERN: From the edge of the photograph, probably six to eight feet.
MR. MELLIN: At the time of the explosion, what happened?
ALAN HERN: The first or the second explosion?
MR. MELLIN: Actually, that's a very good point. What happened after the first explosion?
ALAN HERN: The first explosion, everyone turned and faced down the street back towards the finish line. There was -- I could see a cloud of smoke come off the building. And at that time I don't think anybody -- I didn't think anything was really out of the ordinary. I thought maybe it was a transformer had blown, maybe a gasline blown up, something like that. And we were just kind of watching the trail of smoke and then the second bomb blew up right in front of us. And then at that point I knew that there was -- that was not normal.
MR. MELLIN: As you look at Exhibit 29, you said when the first bomb exploded, everyone looked down. As you look at this photograph, would people be looking to the left or to the right?
ALAN HERN: They would be turned to the left.
MR. MELLIN: All right. After the second explosion what do you remember happening?
ALAN HERN: There was a loud concussion. It made me disoriented for a few seconds. I wasn't really sure what had happened or where I was. There was a big cloud of smoke that enveloped all the people that were to my left. I didn't see anything inside the cloud. It smelled of gunpowder. And it kind of felt like you were under water. And then I turned and I faced towards the Fish Company restaurant, and that's where I saw my daughter was standing in front of me. And I grabbed her thinking, "Well, at least I have one of my kids." I wasn't sure where Aaron was. I knew he was somewhere in the cloud. I wasn't sure what happened to him. So I grabbed her and then I headed up the street away from that -- the bomb, not knowing if there was going to be another bomb, just moving away from that direction and took her up to the street to the Abe and Louie's restaurant, just happened to run into that restaurant.
MR. MELLIN: How was Abigail? Was she injured in any way?
ALAN HERN: She wasn't injured. She had some powder marks on her jacket. She was just hysterical from what had happened. She was crying. Just -- when I went to the restaurant, I happened to find Gisela Yepez was in that restaurant, right where the maître d' station is. And I handed her over to Gisela. And Gisela was crying. And then I -- I went back down the street to look for Aaron.
MR. MELLIN: Were you injured at all at that time?
ALAN HERN: No.
MR. MELLIN: All right. When you went down to find Aaron, where did you find him?
ALAN HERN: At that point the smoke had cleared. There were people on the sidewalk. I was looking around for him. And then we just -- I caught his eye and he caught my eye, and he's my son. I did recognized him. My friend Lou was there and he said, "Where's Aaron?" I said, "He's right there." And he didn't recognize him because he had black soot all over his face and his hair was standing straight up, but I knew him right away. And so he took a couple of steps towards me, and then some people said, "Hey, lay him down on the sidewalk." And so they laid him down on the sidewalk and I went over and knelt down by his head. And I was talking to him and some other people were trying to help. Somebody said, "Grab a belt." Somebody took a belt off and they put it around his leg. And I was just trying to comfort him and tell him that I loved him and that he needed to hang in there. And he said, "It really hurts, Dad. It really hurts." I said, "I know. Just hang in there. We're going to get help."
MR. MELLIN: Can you describe the injuries that you saw on him?
ALAN HERN: He had his shorts on and -- like I was near his head, and I looked down and on his outer left thigh was a crater about as big as my hand that was --
MR. MELLIN: Just for the record, you held your hand up?
ALAN HERN: It was about that big. It was mangled flesh, full of blood. It looked like something you'd see in a war movie, like he'd gotten hit by a hand grenade. I didn't see the extent of his other injuries at that time other than his eyebrows were singed and, again, his hair was sticking straight up and he had -- his legs were all black from the blast.
MR. MELLIN: What were you thinking at that time?
ALAN HERN: I was angry. Aaron plays football and he had gotten hurt in September. He had a dislocated left elbow. And it was a pretty gruesome injury, it was on the field. They had to give him morphine. The ambulance came and took him off the field. And I was worried about the health of his arm for the long run. And I remember thinking -- that's the first thing that came to my head, is like he's not even 12 years old and I can't believe this has happened twice. And he's going to have to go off in the ambulance again and I had no idea how severe the injury was going to be in the long run and just why did this happen to him.
MR. MELLIN: If I could have you --
MR. MELLIN: And just the witness, your Honor.
MR. MELLIN: -- look at Exhibit 27.
ALAN HERN: (Witness complies.)
MR. MELLIN: Mr. Hern, do you recognize what is depicted and shown in Exhibit 27?
ALAN HERN: Yes.
MR. MELLIN: What do you see in that photograph?
ALAN HERN: I see my son Aaron. He's behind the sign. He's got his Nike sweatshirt on.
MR. MELLIN: And does that photo fairly and accurately depict how Aaron looked after the explosion on April 15, 2013?
ALAN HERN: Yes.
MR. MELLIN: Your Honor, I would move into evidence Exhibit 27 and ask to publish it.
MR. BRUCK: Subject to a previous motion.
THE COURT: All right. As indicated, I will admit it.
(Government Exhibit No. 27 received into evidence.)
BY MR. MELLIN:
MR. MELLIN: Mr. Hern, as you look at Exhibit 27, can you please indicate for the ladies and gentlemen where it is that Aaron is in this photo?
ALAN HERN: That's Aaron (indicating).
MR. MELLIN: And for the record, you put an arrow over the top of the young boy on the far left of this photograph?
ALAN HERN: Yes.
MR. MELLIN: And is that essentially the area that Aaron was at when you walked up and saw him?
ALAN HERN: That was a little bit before I came up. When I came up, he stood up and made a couple of steps up the street towards me.
MR. MELLIN: And then if I could have just Mr. Hern see Exhibit 28, please.
MR. MELLIN: Mr. Hern, do you recognize Exhibit 28?
ALAN HERN: Yes.
MR. MELLIN: What is that a photo of?
ALAN HERN: That's Aaron on the ground, people trying to help. That's me in the black.
MR. MELLIN: Does that photo fairly and accurately depict the events of April 15, 2013?
ALAN HERN: Yes.
MR. MELLIN: Your Honor, I would ask to move in Exhibit 28 and publish it.
MR. BRUCK: Same objection.
THE COURT: Same ruling. Yeah.
(Government Exhibit No. 28 received into evidence.)
BY MR. MELLIN:
MR. MELLIN: Now, Mr. Hern, the photo's in front of you and the jury. Can you please indicate where you are in this photograph?
ALAN HERN: That's me.
MR. MELLIN: All right. And you indicated the man who's standing to the right in the photograph with a black shirt and blue pants?
ALAN HERN: Yes.
MR. MELLIN: That didn't really distinguish you, I guess, from the other individual. The one on the right, though, correct?
ALAN HERN: Correct.
MR. MELLIN: All right. And where is Aaron in this photograph?
ALAN HERN: Aaron's right here (indicating).
MR. MELLIN: Can you just draw a circle? Are you able to do that? All right.
ALAN HERN: (Witness complies.)
MR. MELLIN: And the circle you just drew is the young boy who's in the middle of the bottom of that photograph between the two men that are hunched over?
ALAN HERN: Correct.
MR. MELLIN: All right. Do you know who these men were who were next to Aaron?
ALAN HERN: Not at the time. I later met this gentleman right here but I don't know the other two people.
MR. MELLIN: Okay. Now, as you're looking at this photograph, can you tell us exactly what is going on at that point in time?
ALAN HERN: At that time we were, you know, trying to help Aaron. I kind of let them take over in terms of the first aid because I wanted to talk to him. And I wasn't sure what was going to happen to him, so I wanted to make sure that I talked to him and told him I loved him before. So they were busy trying to -- like I said, one guy pulled a belt out and put it on his leg as a tourniquet. There was just, you know, a lot of jostling around. I wasn't able to talk to him for very long, maybe like 20, 30 seconds, and then they scooped him up and then took him over the barricades towards an ambulance.
MR. MELLIN: When you were near Aaron, did you notice any metal objects around?
ALAN HERN: Yeah, when I knelt down near his head, I was on the left side of his body, and I took a look over just to my left and I noticed a piece of metal about as big as a Kleenex box next to his head -- it had jagged edges around the side of it -- laying on the sidewalk.
MR. MELLIN: For the record, you just held your hands up. And essentially the size of about 6 or 8 inches long. Is that right?
ALAN HERN: Uh-huh.
MR. MELLIN: And about how wide?
ALAN HERN: Probably 2 to 3 inches.
MR. MELLIN: Did you notice any other people that were injured around that area?
ALAN HERN: Initially I just kind of saw out of my peripheral vision because I was really focused on trying to find Aaron. When he was picked up and he left, I kind of -- I stood back up and then kind of tried to take in the scene. And at that point a lot of people had been taken away, but the last thing I did see was Martin Richard on the sidewalk and there were two people trying to revive him still. But I could see his eyes clearly and I didn't think he was alive. At that point there was really nothing else to do. There was no one else really left to help. So I turned, and my friend Lou at that point said, "Where's David? I haven't found David." And so we went to go find David. So we went back up to the restaurant to find Gisela and my daughter and see if we could find where David ended up.
MR. MELLIN: Where was Aaron taken?
ALAN HERN: I had no idea at the time. I wish I would have asked. I don't know if they knew where he was going. I was just happy at the time he was getting assistance and he was leaving. So we actually didn't know for a couple of hours where he actually went.
MR. MELLIN: Did you ultimately find David?
ALAN HERN: We did. When we went back to the restaurant, he was there. He had the -- he was -- looked kind of like Aaron did with the smoke on his face and the hair. And he said he was hurt. He had pain in the back side of his leg and on his buttocks. And so Lou just pulled his pants down right there in the restaurant, and he had a large wound down the back of his leg. So we tried to get him out of the restaurant, back out to the street to try and get help. When we first got out to the sidewalk, there was just kind of people running by. We flagged down someone who was -- looked like a medic. And he took a quick look at David and said, "I hate to tell you this, but there's people worse off than him so I'm going to have to keep going down the street." So that guy took off and left. I flagged down another guy who came over, stopped, and then he took David and walked him to an ambulance. David brought his cell phone with him, and so he texted us in the back of the ambulance and told us that they were taking him to Tufts Medical Center. So based on that, that's where we headed. I was with Lou and Gisela and my daughter Abigail. We tried to sync up with my wife, and our goal was to try to get to Tufts in hopes that Aaron was there with David.
MR. MELLIN: Was Aaron at Tufts?
ALAN HERN: He was not. As soon as we got into the door, the receptionist at the front had a computer screen up. And I kind of peeked over and I looked, and I could see David's name on the list of people who had been admitted and Aaron wasn't on the list so I was pretty sure he wasn't there. And then they confirmed that he wasn't at Tufts but they weren't sure where he was.
MR. MELLIN: How did you find out where he was?
ALAN HERN: It was a long, convoluted experience. They took us to another room, there was a bomb scare in the hospital, they weren't share what was going on. They brought all the patients out to this kind of open area in the hospital, then they took us down to a lower auditorium. The cell phone reception wasn't very good in there. Hospital people -- different people kept coming up and saying they were trying to find him. The Boston Police Department came to interview me, and this was about two hours into it, and just as I was finishing talking to them, one of the hospital people came in and said, "We found your son. He's at Boston Children's Hospital." So at that point we were trying to figure out how to get to that location. They gave us a voucher for a taxi but none of the taxis were stopping and no one showed up. My wife, who had just finished running the marathon wanted to walk to Boston Children's, and she was really not in a condition to do that. She was barely able to move around. And a friend of ours flagged down a Lincoln Town Car and convinced the guy to give us a ride, so he gave us a ride to the hospital. And by the time we arrived in the lobby, there were two social workers from the hospital and they told us that he was just coming out of surgery and in about 40 minutes or so we'd be able to see him. So they took us up to the floor that he would be on, the ICU. And we put Catherine on the carpet and gave her ice bags and a blanket because she was in pretty bad shape having just finished, and we just waited until we got a chance to go into the room and see him.
MR. MELLIN: When you saw him, can you describe what injuries you saw?
ALAN HERN: Well, he was beat up pretty good. He had a black eye. His hair still was kind of burned and singed. His eyebrows were singed off. He had the breathing tube in. He was not conscious; he was sleeping. They had given him a drug to help with breathing tube. And then he had the hospital gown on. And then we saw -- they kept the wound open, so they had a dressing on his leg and then a drain that went down to the floor to try and drain it out, I guess keep it clean until they were going to do a further surgery.
MR. MELLIN: Ultimately, did they do the further surgery?
ALAN HERN: Right. So -- well, initially there was a lot of doctors that came in and out of the office the first -- of the room the first day or so. We had a specialist come in about his ears, because both his eardrums were punctured from the blast. And then the hair -- the celia in his ear they were afraid had been damaged so they said that he needed to go on a course of steroids to help with the inflammation so his hearing -- if we did it early, they said that hopefully his hearing would recover. Then we had people from -- I think the disease control came in and said they'd found bone fragments of somebody else in his wound and that as a precaution that he would have to take this course of antiviral therapy that is common for people who have HIV, just to make sure. They said he's probably okay because of the heat and the blast, but just to make sure they thought that was a good idea. And then the various other specialists that came through, the nurses to dress his wounds. It was a very busy time just trying to get everything under control. Three days later they went back in and did a cleaning of the wound again, and then they were going to now see if it was possible to close it back up. There was a possibility that he would need skin grafts to close up the wound because they didn't know if there would be enough skin left over to close it. The fascia, the covering over your muscles, had been torn and some of it was gone, so when they -- they went in, they were able to sew that part back together but it kind of caused a puckering effect and his leg doesn't look like his other leg. But anyway, fortunately they were able to get the skin together, and then they stapled the skin together.
MR. MELLIN: Do you know how many staples it took to close that wound?
ALAN HERN: Well, that wound was -- he had staples all over both legs. So there were other injuries besides that one. I didn't see that initially at the bomb site, but he had zipper-like wounds all down both legs, he had tattooing.
MR. MELLIN: What do you mean by zipper-like wounds?
ALAN HERN: When the stitches went in, they were long scars, about that long, that looked like zippers. He had --
MR. MELLIN: You just indicated about, what, 3, 4, 5 inches?
ALAN HERN: Right. So he had a few on his right leg, also on his left leg. He had some BB marks on his abdomen. The doctor said that his scrotum had been clipped by a piece of something. Fortunately it didn't damage anything. And his shins, because he had the shorts on, were tattooed from debris, they said, on the ground. So it was a solid rectangle from his kneecap down to his ankle, and it looked like pencil lead, just thick on both legs. So all those had to be cleaned and stapled as well. So between the two legs and the major injury in his left leg, he had 62 staples in his legs.
MR. MELLIN: How many days did Aaron end up spending in the hospital?
ALAN HERN: He was there for nine days.
MR. MELLIN: With the Court's indulgence.
(Counsel confer off the record.)
MR. MELLIN: Thank you, your Honor. Nothing further.
MR. BRUCK: Thank you, Mr. Hern. We have nothing.
THE COURT: All right, Mr. Hern. Thank you. You may step down.
(The witness is excused.)
THE COURT: We'll take the morning recess at this point.
COURT CLERK: All rise for the Court and the jury. The Court will take the morning recess.
(The Court and jury exit the courtroom and there is a recess in the proceedings at 11:14 a.m.)
COURT CLERK: All rise for the Court.
(The Court enters the courtroom at 11:50 a.m.)
COURT CLERK: Be seated.
THE COURT: I apologize for the brief delay. There are sometimes other things that come up.