At 2:49 p.m. on April 15, two pressure-cooker bombs loaded with ball bearings and nails detonated near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, on Boylston Street, shrouding two blocks of multistory brick buildings in white smoke and sending shrapnel hurtling in all directions. Three people were killed and 264 injured in the terrorist attack. Merokean Kara Iskenderian, 20, who is now a junior at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., and a member of the school’s marathon team, was a third of a mile –– or less than three minutes –– away from finishing the race when the crudely constructed, homemade bombs exploded. more