Surviving a major bombing is the extraordinary — and repeated — situation that one Utah teen can live to tell about.
Mason Wells, a 19-year-old from Sandy, Utah, is expected to make a full recovery from the bombing attack at the Brussels airport Tuesday, which left him with a surgery scar, severed Achilles tendon, head gash, shrapnel injuries and severe burns.
Wells had once again found himself at the centre of a major attack — standing within feet of a bomb that exploded at the Belgian airport. The blasts in the Belgian capital killed at least 34 people and wounded dozens at the airport and a subway train.
Three years ago, Wells and his father felt the ground shake and narrowly escaped death from an April 2013 attack in the US, when a pressure-cooker bomb exploded a block away from where they were watching his mother run the Boston Marathon.
Wells was also in Paris at the time of the attacks in November, but was in a different part of the city and was not injured.
“Hopefully he’s run his lifelong odds and we’re done,” said Chad Wells about the oldest of their five children. “I think it will make him a stronger person ... Maybe the Boston experience was there to help him get through this experience.”
The former high school football and lacrosse player had four months left on his two-year Mormon mission, and was planning to major in engineering at the University of Utah next fall. He also wanted to reapply to the Naval Academy after barely missing the cut after high school, his father said.
His father said he woke up to the latest news on the TV before calling his son’s mission president in France and found out his son was injured but alive. More than eight hours later, they finally spoke to their son, who was groggy and exhausted after surgery. The teen is in good spirits but his family is still figuring out when they’ll get to see him, and if he’ll finish his mission.
“I’m completely shocked by the news. It’s the kind of thing as a parent you never, ever want to wake up to,” Chad Wells said. “We’re just grateful that’s he lived through this experience.”
Thousands of Utah Mormons have served proselytising missions around the world. Church members account for as many as two-thirds of the state’s population.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints instructed others in the France Paris Mission to stay in their homes, though mission President Frederic J Babin said the missionaries will still continuing working in their mission to preach the gospel.
As for Wells, family friend Chris Lambson said he thinks divine interventions have helped the young man survive in the face of such extraordinary, if not repeated, circumstances. “He’s doing extremely well,” Lambson said. “His biggest concern right now is about housing at U of U.”
