DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — The sisters from Tennessee sightseeing in London had no idea whether they had found the right subway line. But they had a pass to ride the “tube” all day, so Katie and Emily Benton figured they would get to the Tower of London eventually. Then the bomb went off.
“There was no fireball — it was just so not Hollywood,” Kathleen “Katie” Benton, 21, recalled. “They really have no idea what a bomb is like.”
Exploding only 10 feet to their right, the blast from the terrorist’s bomb tore apart the subway car, flinging the Benton sisters to the floor in a haze of shattered glass, smoke and blood. The woman just one seat to their right was killed.
“I honestly thought I was going to die during the explosion,” Emily Benton, 20, said. “Just the sensations that I was feeling — I thought I was on fire. I could feel my skin like peeling off. Just the fact that my eyes opened and I was alive was incredible.”
The sisters’ trip to London was the culmination of a summer abroad for Katie Benton, who arrived in Kenya in early June to work with a group helping locals learn to protect their crops from wildlife. Emily Benton joined her sister the day before the attacks in London, and the pair planned to vacation for a week before returning to Tennessee.
On the morning of the bombings, Katie Benton said she remembers sitting with Londoners on their way to work. Everyone, it seemed, had a briefcase or a bag for a laptop, although there were a few families mixed in the crowd. “Honestly, I was more focused on my coffee than if we were on the right train,” she said. “I really was not looking around and like, ’Hmmm, that person looks like they’re about to blow up a train.’”
After the bomb went off, Katie Benton remembers holding her sister as they sat on the floor in front of their seats on the darkened train. “It was about 10 minutes of checking out Emily before I actually looked down and realized I was bleeding all over the place,” she said. “Just intense pain. Just so incredibly deafening.”
Emily Benton suffered the most severe injuries: broken bones and lost skin on her left foot and a fractured right hand. Katie Benton suffered shrapnel wounds in her right foot that exposed tendons and bones. Both suffered some hearing damage from the blast.
“My foot looks like it got attacked by a shark,” Emily Benton said. “I don’t know, I’m so happy to have my foot that I don’t really mind. I have a nasty scar on my arm. It’s like a souvenir, you know. Every time I look at that … it’s a part of your life.”
Their mother flew to London and watched over their transfer to Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, where the sisters later underwent reconstructive surgery. They don’t watch TV news coverage about the attacks. “It hasn’t interested me at all to watch,” Emily Benton said. “I was there and I know what happened and I don’t really want to relive it again.”
Their doctors say they are progressing well and both left the hospital yesterday for their home in Knoxville, Tenn.
Both said they have yet to awaken with self-pity or hatred for the attackers. They see their wounds as “souvenirs” and believe the experience has only served to strengthen their Christian faith and their appreciation for what they have.
“There’s no better way to fight terrorism than to turn what they meant for evil into good and the Lord is certainly capable of that,” Katie Benton said.
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