Boston dad’s horror
Knew dying boy ‘wouldn’t make it’
A heartbroken dad brought a courtroom to tears Thursday as he recalled the final moments of his dying 8yearold son after the Boston Marathon bombing.
Bill Richard’s voice faltered — and jurors openly wept — as he described seeing his son Martin’s limp body.
“I saw a little boy who had his body severely damaged by an explosion. I just knew from what I saw there was no chance,” Richard testified on the second day of the federal trial of bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
“When I saw Martin’s condition, I knew he wasn’t going to make it.”
Richard said he and his wife agreed that he would go to the hospital with their other two children while she stayed by Martin’s side.
“I looked at Martin for the last time, and I went across the street,” Richard said.
When his wife called him later to say Martin was dead, the dad said he simply replied, “I know.”
Richard described how he, wife Denise and their three children had stopped by a Ben & Jerry’s for ice cream just before the twin blasts turned the finish line of the April 2013 marathon into bloody chaos.
“I can even remember the details of what they ordered,” the father said.
Richard recalled how the family then returned to the race — and thought they’d lucked out when they found a spot to watch outside the Forum restaurant.
Then, Richard said, he heard a “thunderous explosion” at the finish line — and remembered thinking they should leave. But a second later, the “earpiercing” shriek of a second bomb blast rang out.
He said he got up and ran back to where his family had been standing — and found only his 11yearold son, Henry.
The pair eventually found 6yearold Jane Richard lying next to a mailbox.
“She tried to get up, and she fell. It was then that I noticed her leg, and I picked her up . . . She didn’t have it. It was blown off,’’ Richard said.
He said he then spotted a small crowd of people, including his wife, hovering over Martin.
“I saw my son alive, barely, for the last time,” the dad told the silent courtroom. “I knew that if I didn’t act quickly, we might not only lose Martin, we’d lose Jane, too.
“I was attempting to rip my pants, to do something to help . . . my attempts to tear my pants away wasn’t fast enough.”
One juror wiped tears from her eyes when the prosecution played a video of Richard running toward his family just after the blast.
Denise Richard moved up to the front row of the courtroom for her husband’s testimony.
Jane’s left leg was amputated below the knee — and Denise lost her sight in one eye after undergoing surgery.
Bill Richard suffered some hearing loss, but said he can “still hear the beautiful voices of my family.”
Tsarnaev briefly glanced toward Richard leaving the stand.
The 21yearold faces the death penalty for his role in the April 15 terror attack, which left three dead and injured more than 260 people.
He also allegedly killed an MIT police officer while on the run with his brother, Tamerlan, who was killed during the hunt.
A man who lost both legs in the bombing recalled in court Thursday how he didn’t expect to survive.
“This is how it’s going to end. I had a great life. I experienced a lot. I kind of made peace with myself,” said Jeffrey Bauman, who became a face of the tragedy after a photographer took a snapshot of him being rushed from the scene in a wheelchair by a good Samaritan in a cowboy hat.
Bauman said he locked eyes with Tamerlan before the bombs went off.
“[He] didn’t look like anyone who was there, didn’t look like he was having fun,” he said. “I thought that was very weird.”