BOSTON — A man who became a symbol of the Boston Marathon bombing when he was wheeled away, ashen-faced, his legs severely injured, testified Thursday that he locked eyes with one of the bombers shortly before the explosives went off.
“He was alone. He wasn’t watching the race,” said Jeff Bauman, who walked into court on two prosthetic legs. “I looked at him, and he just kind of looked down at me. I just thought it was odd.”
Later, from his hospital bed, Bauman gave the FBI a description of a man who authorities say turned out to be Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Tsarnaev, 26, died in a gun battle with police days after the bombing.
Bauman testified at the trial of Tsarnaev’s younger brother, Dzhokhar, who could get the death penalty if convicted of charges he helped carry out the 2013 bombings that killed three people and wounded more than 260.
Before testimony began Thursday, Tsarnaev’s attorneys complained to the judge that the survivors’ testimony from the previous day was too gruesome and that such accounts should be limited.
Prosecutors denied that any of the survivors gave victim-impact testimony and said they merely described what they saw. U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. agreed with prosecutors and refused to limit survivors’ testimony.
