Boston Marathon Citizen Journalist from Edina

In the wee hours of Friday, April 19, with New England in shock from the Boston Marathon bombings the previous Monday, Edina native Andrew Kitzenberg suddenly had a bird’s-eye view of the events that riveted the nation.At 12:46 a.m., on the street below his Watertown, Mass., apartment, the Tsarnaev brothers who allegedly perpetrated the terrorist attack engaged in a shootout with police. Kitzenberg heard the “pops” of gunfire, looked out his window and saw the brothers hiding behind a black Mercedes SUV while they exchanged fire with law enforcement. He recorded the grisly events through his camera lens as they threw a pressure cooker bomb at police, Tamerlan Tsarnaev charged and fell, and younger brother Dzokhar drove at police, ran over his brother and broke through the barricades the police had set up. Kitzenberg’s roommate later noticed a bullet hole through a chair in their second-story apartment. Theirs was a very close call.Kitzenberg instantly became a star of the quickly unfolding news story and a prime example of the power of citizen journalism. He was interviewed on every major television station, and published his photos of the shootout on his blog, Get On Hand, for all to see. Kitzenberg requested that any media that used his photos of the shootout make a contribution to The One Fund Boston, onefundboston.org, to support victims of the Boston Marathon attacks.