Towson teacher injured in Boston Marathon bombing

Twenty-nine-year-old Towson preschool teacher Erika Brannock was
stationed near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15,
waiting to cheer on her mother during the final strides of the race,
when it happened: bright flashes, screams and cries, the sensation of
falling in slow motion.

The first of two homemade bombs fashioned by radicalized Islamist
immigrant brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev had detonated, sending
shrapnel flying that would kill three and wound hundreds more.
Brannock’s injuries—including hearing loss and wounds severe enough to
require a partial amputation of her left leg—would keep her in the
hospital longer than any other victim of the grisly event.

But when the Ellicott City native returned to Baltimore in June, she
did so not with bitterness but with remarkable grace and a quiet
determination to move forward, which she has. In October, shortly after
taking her first steps using her new prosthesis, she presided over the
start of Baltimore’s own marathon.

“I wasn’t going to stop living because something was
uncomfortable or something was scary.” —Erika Brannock to WBAL-TV’s Kate
Amara at the Baltimore marathon