Father of Boston victim Krystle Campbell was told she was alive

THE devastated family of Krystle Marie Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager killed by a bomb at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, were initially told she had survived the attack.

In the chaotic aftermath of the bombings, Campbell’s father William, was told by staff at a Boston hospital that his daughter had been admitted to the intensive care unit and was undergoing surgery to repair serious injuries to her legs, the Boston Herald reports. In fact, it was Krystle Marie’s friend Karen Rand - her companion on the day of the marathon - who was on the operating table.

The tragic mix-up was only revealed at 2am on Tuesday when William was allowed to visit his ‘daughter’ and was taken to Rand’s hospital bed instead. "I said, ‘That’s not my daughter, that’s Karen! Where’s my daughter?’," Campbell told a local television channel.

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Realising there had been a mistake, police showed William a photo ID that had been found on Krystle Marie’s body. "I almost passed out on the floor," he said.

Krystle Marie was one of three people who died as a result of Monday’s attack. The first to be identified was eight-year-old Martin Richard, who was killed near the finish line shortly after hugging his father who was completing the race.

The third victim of the bombings was identified today as 23-year-old Chinese national Lu Lingzi. The postgraduate student, who was majoring in statistics at Boston University, was standing among a large group of spectators near the finish line when the first bomb exploded. One of her friends, another Chinese student called Zhou Danling, was also badly injured in the blast. He is now in a stable condition in a Boston hospital.

Lingzi’s death has sparked an extraordinary outpouring of emotion in China, where her name has been posted on the Chinese social media site Weibo more than 100,000 times, says the New Yorker. The postings are often accompanied by virtual candles with flickering red and yellow flames.

"This is a sad day for the Chinese people," one blogger wrote. Another said: "Never could have imagined that one of the casualties could be a sister from [the city of] Shengyang."

In Boston, some 17 victims remain in a critical condition in hospital after being wounded by shrapnel from the two bombs, which were made by filling pressure-cookers with nails and ball-bearings.