PORTLAND, Maine — A Boston Marathon bombing survivor said testifying against the man who planted the bombs two years ago was healing and powerful.
Karen McWatters, who lives in Portland part-time, lost her leg during the bombings and her friend Krystal Campbell died.
She said she initially was nervous about testifying against bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
“Once I got there, it was empowering really to be able to say what happened and my part of the story and to be able to look right at him — to not have fear,” McWatters recalled. “I kind of skipped out of the courtroom, and I really felt relief. A big weight was off me.”
She said she was satisfied with the verdict. Tsarnaev was convicted of setting the bombs at the finish line of the 2013 marathon with his brother, who subsequently was killed after a multiday manhunt and shootout with police.
McWatters was near the finish line when the first of two explosives went off. The back side of her leg was destroyed, and doctors were not able to save it.
“[Rescuers] said at the site I almost bled out right there,” she recalled during a previous interview with the Bangor Daily News. “Lying on the sidewalk, it just looked like my foot was broken and I had a bit of a hole in my leg.”
Over the two years since the attack, McWatters has advocated for blood donations and other causes she believes in.
“It was the first time for me that I needed a lot of blood — I needed platelets,” she said in the previous interview. “There were a lot of people that day who needed a lot of blood. So many people’s lives were saved because of the blood that had been donated previously.”
She will testify in the penalty phase, which starts Tuesday, a day after this year’s Boston Marathon.
McWatters is preparing to walk the TD Beach to Beacon 10K race in Cape Elizabeth this summer.
BDN Portland Bureau Chief Seth Koenig contributed to this story.