Claim: Photograph shows a girl from Sandy Hook Elementary School who was killed in the Boston Marathon bombings.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, April 2013]
Just wondering if this were true it is circulating fast on Facebook. I don't believe it to be true. It is a photo posted saying that this eight year old ran a marathon for Sandy Hook Elementary and has died.
Origins: One prominent rumor from the Boston Marathon bombings claimed that one of the victims was an 8-year-old girl who attended school at Sandy Hook and/or was running the marathon for the victims of the Sandy Hook shootings, wither later iterations of the rumor including a photograph of the purported victim as shown above.
This rumor was false: the child killed in the bombings was not a participant in the race, and children are not allowed on the course. As reported in the Boston Globe, the young victim was Martin Richard, an 8-year-old boy who was killed as he waited near the finish line with his parents and siblings:
“They were always together," neighbor Jane Sherman said of the Richard family, who live next door to her on Carruth Street in Dorchester. "This is the worst tragedy I have ever been through in my life. It’s a horrific situation." The boy was killed and his mother and his younger sister gravely wounded as they waited at the Boylston Street finish line.
Grief-stricken neighbors today described Martin Richard, the 8-year-old Dorchester boy killed when two bombs detonated at the finish line of the Boston Marathon , as a child full of life who was part of a very close-knit family.
The picture of the girl is completely unrelated to the Boston Marathon bombings; it's a photograph taken from another race (the
3rd Annual Joe Cassella 5K) run in Virginia back in May 2012.
Last updated: 22 April 2013
 | Sources: |
Allen, Evan and John R. Ellement. "Dorchester Neighbors Mourn Martin Richard." The Boston Globe. 16 April 2013. Ford, Bev et al. "Martin Richard, 8-Year-Old Killed in Boston Marathon Terror Attack." [New York] Daily News. 16 April 2013.
