SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – Surviving a major bombing is the extraordinary – and repeated – situation that one Utah teen can live to tell about.
Mason Wells, a 19-year-old from Sandy, Utah – who narrowly escaped the Boston Marathon attack in 2013 – is expected to make a full recovery from the bombing at the Brussels airport Tuesday, which left him with a surgery scar, severed Achilles tendon, head gash, shrapnel injuries and severe burns.
Again Wells found himself at the center of a major attack – standing within feet of a bomb that exploded at the Belgian airport. The blasts in the Belgian capital killed 34 people and wounded scores at the airport and a subway station.
Three years ago, Wells and his father felt the ground shake from an attack in the U.S., when a pressure-cooker bomb exploded a block away from where they were watching his mother run the Boston Marathon.
“Hopefully he’s run his lifelong odds and we’re done,” said Chad Wells about the oldest of their five children. “I think it will make him a stronger person…Maybe the Boston experience was there to help him get through this experience.”