Survivors of the Boston marathon bombing felt relief and closure Friday as they learned the coward who attacked the finish line would be sentenced to death.
“He took away his own right to live,” tweeted Sydney Corcoran, who almost bled to death in the blast set off in 2013 by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan.
Liz Norden, whose two sons lost legs in the blasts, called the verdict bittersweet.
“There are no winners today, but I feel justice for my family,” said Norden. “I have to watch my two sons put on a leg every day. So I don’t know about closure. But I can tell you it feels like a weight has been pulled off my shoulders.’’
Jarrod Clowery, who survived even though his body was hit by dozens of pieces of shrapnel when one of two pressure cooker bombs blew up, said the 14 jurors who handed down the death sentence had a “tough job” to do.
“I’m just glad I didn’t have to do it and have to go through it. I stand behind what the jury and then the judge and everybody involved, I stand behind their verdict,” Clowery told CNN.
Dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis — who lost part of her leg in the explosion — was elated, tweeting:
Some survivors, like amputee Rebekah Gregory, waited with bated breath before the verdict was delivered.
Richard Donohue returned to work last Friday after nearly dying in a shootout between cops and the Tsarnaev brothers in Watertown.
He said the verdict has brought him closure.
“Just over two years after the events that impacted us as a community and a nation, we can finally close this chapter in our lives,” he said in a statement.
“The verdict, undoubtedly a difficult decision for the jury, gives me relief and closure, as well as the ability to keep moving forward.”
In the federal courtroom in Boston on Friday were Bill and Denise Richard, parents of eight-year-old Martin, the youngest to die in the bombings.
The couple vehemently opposed sentencing Tsarnaev to death, writing in a Boston Globe op-ed that doing so would “prolong reliving the most painful day of our lives” because of years of appeals his attorney would file.
“As long as the defendant is in the spotlight, we have no choice but to live a story told on his terms, not ours,” the Richards wrote.
“The minute the defendant fades from our newspapers and TV screens is the minute we begin the process of rebuilding our lives and our family.”
Four people died as a result of the attacks and nearly 270 others were wounded.
Off-duty firefighter Michael Ward, who responded the day of the attacks, said the sentence was “nothing to celebrate.”
“This is a matter of justice … He wanted to go to hell, and he will get there early,” he said.