This year’s Tax Day will also mark the fourth anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing, when brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev detonated two homemade bombs, killing three and injuring hundreds.
The brothers then killed an MIT police officer (to try to obtain his firearm), and had a shootout with police, with one of the officers dying a year later.
While Obama bragged that there were no foreign terrorist attacks on American soil during his presidency, the brothers certainly drew foreign inspiration, and they were immigrants from former Soviet Bloc states. They learned how to build bombs from the propaganda magazine Inspire, a magazine published by an al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen.
Tamerlan was killed in the aforementioned shootout with police, while Dzhokhar is on death row. Tamerlan has already learned that paradise wasn’t awaiting him – and the clock is ticking down until Dzhokhar learns the same. Justice was served, and while it’s almost cliche to say, the tragedy brought the nation closer together.
For one victim and one of the heroic first responders who saved lives that day, they were brought closer together than anyone could have imagined.
This is really incredible:
When Roseann Sdoia was laid up with an amputated leg in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, love was the last thing on her mind. But her mother, ever the matchmaker, saw a perfect opportunity as handsome firefighter Mike Materia hovered nearby.
“In the hospital, my mom tried to set me up with him,” Sdoia said. “She was like, ‘Oh, did you see that firefighter? He’s so cute.’ And I was like, ‘Mom, I just got blown up.’ ”
But Mom’s persistence paid off. The victim and her hero struck up a romance that will soon lead to marriage.
On the day of the bombing in April 2013, Sdoia, 48, a long-distance runner, was a spectator near the marathon finish line when the pressure-cooker bombs went off. Materia, 37, rushed to her aid and comforted her during the ride to Massachusetts General Hospital in a police vehicle.“I asked him if I was going to die. And he told me that I was going to be OK, that I only had a flesh wound,” she recalled.
As weeks passed, the pair struck up a friendship. Materia helped her track down a prosthetist and get back on her feet emotionally and physically, she said.“I knew I was starting to have feelings for him because he was so kind and caring,” she said. “And he has an unbelievable smile.”The lovebirds went on their first date in June 2013. A month later, they spent the Fourth of July on Nantucket. Last month, he proposed on a lookout deck at the island’s whaling museum with the help of their pooch, Sal.
The dog was wearing a special engraved dog tag that read, “Mike wants to know . . . If you’ll marry him.”
H/T: The New York Post
Again, it sounds cliche, but think of the chances of this! Maybe the two would have met at another time and in another place, but they didn’t. The circumstances brought them together. Out of all the tragedy and chaos. It’s just mind-boggling.
You can see Roseann’s story here:
The couple plans on releasing a book together called “Perfect Strangers” which would detail how their lives intersected as a result of the bombing.
Both will also take part race all 1,576 steps to the top of the Empire State Building in New York.
Isn’t this an amazing story? Share this tale of heroism with your friends and family!
