One day after a jury in Boston voted to give Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the death penalty, one of the bombing's survivors, Heather Abbott, reflected on whether the news means that she and her fellow survivors can now find closure.
"I think that most of us [survivors] are happy that the verdict is finally in and it’s closer to being over," Abbott, who lost the lower part of her leg in the bombing and testified at Tsarnaev's trial, told TODAY's Erica Hill on Saturday. "But unfortunately I don’t think there’s really a sense of closure here."
The lack of closure from the trial echoes a sentiment that she expressed Friday on her Facebook page, where she wrote that regardless of the trial's outcome, Friday's news brought sadness and reflection for all the lives lost during the bombing.
Abbott also said that months ago, she had looked for such closure by testifying during the trial. "I think I hoped that maybe seeing him that close and being able to tell my story to the jury might answer some of those questions," she said. "And I don't think it brought any closure. I think that when I reflect back now, closure happened when I decided to move on with my life."
And in moving on with her life, Abbott has created the Heather Abbott Foundation, which develops prostheses for those who lose limbs during traumatic events.
"It has been tremendous for my healing," she said. "Just to make some sense of what happened and try to do something good with it has helped me heal."