A father has described in excruciating detail how his little boy was killed, his young daughter lost a leg and his wife was blinded in one eye in the Boston Marathon bombings which ripped his life apart.
Bill Richard spoke carefully and calmly at the trial on Thursday of one of the brothers blamed for the bloodshed.
Accused bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 21, faces the death penalty if convicted of the April 15, 2013 bombings which killed three people and wounded 264.
At times, Richard paused to keep his emotions in check, as he gave devastating testimony about how the bombings ruptured his family forever.
Martin, eight, was killed. Jane, then six, had her left leg amputated and wife Denise lost sight in one eye. Miraculously, Richard and elder son Henry escaped with comparatively minor injuries.
"I saw a little boy who had his body severely damaged by an explosion and I just knew from what I saw that there was no chance," Richard recalled.
"The colour of his skin and so on. I knew in my head that I needed to act quickly or we might not only lose Martin but we might lose Jane too."
He told his badly wounded wife that he had to leave her to go to a hospital with the children.
"She agreed and she was crying," he told the court. "It was at that time when I basically saw my son alive, barely, for the last time."
Jurors put their hands to their mouths and another amputee survivor, who testified on Wednesday, sobbed in the gallery.
Tsarnaev fixed his gaze straight ahead.
Richard said the young family only moments before had been having a "beautiful day," stopping for ice cream and enjoying the marathon, where he and wife Denise took the children to cheer on their track coaches.
He said they wound up by chance at the spot where the second bomb went off, having searched for a place where the crowd thinned out so the children could get a good view of the finish line.
"It was very random. We had no reason to stop where we did other than there was just an opening, so we took it."
Richard says he still suffers constant high-pitched ringing in his ears and loss of hearing.
"But I can still hear you, I can still hear music and I can still hear the beautiful voices of my family," he said.
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