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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING VICTIMS REMEMBERED

BEFORE 9/11 there was Oklahoma City. Today marks the 16th anniversary of the second worst terrorist attack on American soil--and a sickening harbinger of the heartache to come. On April 19, 1995 domestic terrorists detonated a massive bomb at Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The result: carnage and chaos. By the end of the day, 168 people had been killed and hundreds more wounded. Among the dead was Antonio Cooper Jr. He was 6-months-old.
"I feel it's a necessity to be here," Antonio Cooper Sr. said Tuesday as he strapped a colorful bouquet of spring flowers to the chair bearing his son's
name. 
His  grandmother Wanda McNeely said: "It weighed heavily on my heart. But I couldn't tear myself not to come."
More than 300 other people attended ceremonies commemorating the sinister attack that also killed 17 other children who were being looked after in building's daycare center. America took ultimate vengeance on the mastermind, Timothy McVeigh, when he was put to death in Terra Haute, Indiana in 2001. His co-conspirator Terry Nichols is serving multiple life sentences.
 MORE FROM NPR

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