Jury Told of Horror at Bombing Scene

Tales of human suffering from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing continued to be told in a federal courtroom Thursday, including that of a doctor who had to use his pocketknife to amputate a woman’s leg and free her from the rubble of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Dr. James Sullivan, an orthopedic surgeon, told the jury in the Timothy J. McVeigh trial that he had to crawl through the debris to get to Daina Bradley, a young woman whose mother and two children lay dead near her in what had been the Social Security office.

Her leg was pinned beneath a fallen beam. Sullivan is right-handed, but in the cramped space he had to use his left hand. And because she was slipping into shock, he had to forgo the use of anesthesia.

“Once I started cutting, she started kicking and screaming,” he said.

He sliced through the skin and bone and as the procedure wore on, his medical tools began to dull. So he reached around to his back pocket.

“I completed the amputation with a pocketknife,” he said.

A jury of seven men and five women, having found McVeigh guilty in the bombing, is hearing testimony about the impact of the crime on victims before deciding whether to sentence him to death or life in prison with no parole.

Prosecutors are expected to complete their part of the sentencing phase today. The defense then will try to persuade the jurors to spare McVeigh’s life.

The courtroom Thursday was filled with tears--from jurors, prosecutors and victims sitting in the back rows. McVeigh--again--showed no emotion.

Clifford R. Cagle, a Housing and Urban Development employee, described waking up on the floor in the Murrah building, choking on his own blood.

“The left side of my face was crushed,” he said. “I had a hole in my skull. I had glass in my neck. My eye was hanging out, cut in five pieces.”

Cagle broke down on the stand as he struggled with the last of his testimony: “ . . . and my grandson seeing me like this.”

Gregory Sohn, a first sergeant in the Army, lost his wife, Victoria, an Army master sergeant. The bombing occurred on the birthday of one of their sons. Her body was found six days later on another son’s birthday.

One child, Michael, still has nightmares. “He dreams of monsters in the night,” his father said. His other children worry that someone is going to blow up their house.

He too is profoundly hurt by the events of April 19, 1995. Everywhere Gregory Sohn goes today, he carries with him his wife’s coffee cup that says “Mother”; at home he keeps their marriage license, two rings and her death certificate.

The day before the bombing, Michael James Lenz Jr. and his wife, Carrie, learned that she was pregnant with their first child--a boy. They decided to name him Michael James Lenz III.

But the next morning the bombing took two lives, that of his wife and their unborn child. The devastating loss led Lenz to drink and depression.

“There was a point where I actually stuck a pistol in my mouth,” he said. “But I couldn’t pull the trigger, thank God.”

Sullivan, who amputated Bradley’s leg, said that he is still haunted by that morning. Although he could not use anesthesia, he did give Bradley a drug to erase her memory of what was about to happen.

As he waited for the drug to kick in, he said, he spoke to God.

“I prayed she wouldn’t die as a result of my treatment. And if I did, that my family would remember me.”