When 16-year-old Mason Wells from Utah felt the ground shake beneath him after a pressure-cooker bomb detonated and wreaked havoc to the participants in the 2013 Boston Marathon (claiming the lives of six people and injuring 280), he never imagined that in three years’ time he would personally experience more terrorist attacks.
In fact, last year in November, Mason was two-hours away from the City of Lights when a group of terrorists carried out a series of coordinated attacks in different Parisian locations.
While his first two brushes with terrorists left him relatively unscathed, the third time he wasn’t as fortunate.
READ: Father and son survivors of the Paris terrorist attack share their story
He had traveled the world as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and in fact had four months left in this two-year mission, said a Telegraph report.
Mason was in Belgium for a two-year Mormon mission with other missionaries, and they were at the Brussels airport when the attack happened.
19-years-old Mason Wells (left); Photo credit: AP News
His face covered in bandages, Mason talked to reporters from a link in his hospital room. “The first blast went off over to my right, at about 10-15 meters,” he said.
“I was at the back of the Delta (Airlines) check-in line. And the blast was really loud. It even lifted my body a little bit. I remember feeling a lot of really hot and really cold feelings on the whole right side of my body.”
Covered in his own blood mixed with others’, he remembered seeing flames in front of him as well as at his feet.
READ: 35 ways to teach your child how to love humankind and live in a terrorism-free world
“We were really close,” he said. “I feel lucky to escape with what I did.”
Fortunately, when the second bomb exploded, Mason had made his way outside and was sitting at the sidewalk of the airport.
“I was sitting there on the sidewalk outside the airport sitting in my own blood. And there was a feeling of calm and peace that I had and it was just beyond the physical shock that I had.”
He said he attributed it to God, and that if there was one thing he learned from the whole ordeal, it was that God could hear prayers.
He suffered a surgery scar, a severed Achilles tendon, a head gash, shrapnel injuries and severe burns, but despite all of that he is expected to make full recovery.
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