Sunday, April 16, 2023

Ten years later

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the 2013 Boston Marathon terror attacks. 

The devastation was enormous, the attacks hideously cruel. There were three deaths, and hundreds of injuries.  Seventeen of those injured lost limbs.

Those killed in the bombings were Martin Richard, age 8, from the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston; Krystle Campbell, 29, of Medford; and Lu Lingzi, 23, of China, a graduate student at Boston University. (Lu Lingzi has often been referred to as Lingzi Lu, in news stories.)

There was, too, the terrible related violence which took place days later.

There was the April 18th shooting death of M.I.T. police officer Sean Collier, 27. 

And: the severe injury suffered by Boston officer Dennis Simmonds--from an explosive device thrown by one of the Tsarnaev brothers, during the April 19th firefight in nearby Watertown. He died a year later, at 28, as a result of the injury.  

A Boston transit officer, Richard Donohue, was shot, near-fatally, during the Watertown battle. In 2015, local officials said that his injury, in the midst of the chaos that night, was likely from friendly fire.  Officer Donohue returned to work in 2015, yet in 2016, at age 36, he retired, due to the continuing effects of his injury.

Here are two moving stories, from yesterday's Boston Globe, about two survivors of the bombings.  

The first is about Jeff Bauman, who was 27 in 2013. He was grievously wounded by the first of the two explosions on Boylston Street. 

The second story is about Jane Richard, 7 years old in 2013, who was injured terribly by the second bomb. Her brother Martin was killed.  Her mother lost her vision in one eye; her father was wounded as well.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/13/sports/jeff-bauman-boston-marathon-bombing/

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/13/metro/ten-years-later-jane-richard-her-family-reflect-their-trials-since-marathon-bombing/

Here, too, is the first part of a lengthy Boston Globe article about the Richard family, published in April of 2014; there is a link, at the end, to the second part of the article: 

 https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/04/12/loss-and-love/a19pcWz6WF5nNozPPItwYI/story.html