Boston Bombing Victim Posts Courageous Open Letter to Tsarnaev

A woman who lost her leg after injuries sustained in the Boston Marathon bombing posted an open letter to admitted bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Facebook, saying she’s no longer afraid of the man who gave her nightmares.

“This afternoon,” Rebekah Gregory DiMartino wrote on Wednesday, “I got to walk into a courtroom and take my place at the witness stand, just a few feet away from where you were sitting … I looked at you right in the face … and realized I wasn’t afraid anymore.”

Although DiMartino said she found sitting in court upsetting, wrote she realized it was “the crazy kind of step forward that I needed all along.”

But she didn’t mince words when it came to the 27-year-old accused of 30 charges relating to the Marathon bombing and the ensuing chase and firefight:

Gregory posted another open letter in November saying goodbye to her leg before amputation. Doctors had tried 15 surgeries to restore it to health.

Tsarnaev’s lawyer said, in so many words, “It was him” during her opening statement Wednesday. But she entered a plea of “not guilty,” arguing that he had been manipulated by his older brother, Tamerlan.