Slideshow: Tornadoes hit Texas

Ralph Lauer / EPA

A series of tornadoes ripped across northern Texas, killing six and injuring dozens more.

Launch slideshow

With six people already confirmed dead, rescue crews in a northern Texas town continued their search for victims Friday after a wave of 16 tornadoes crashed through the region, ripping homes to pieces and laying waste to large swaths of the area.

In Granbury, seven people were still missing after an EF4 tornado packing winds up to 200 mph destroyed a neighborhood late Wednesday, the National Weather Service said. 

Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds told reporters that the search for victims had to be expanded because "two of these people that they found were not even near their homes, so we're going to have to search the area out there."

Full coverage from NBCDFW.com

Nearly 100 damaged homes remained off limits Thursday night as crews in the hardest-hit areas continued to a search for survivors and victims.

Hundreds of people had checked in with authorities to say they had survived.

The violent twisters flattened homes, uprooted trees, tossed trailers onto cars and left hundreds homeless in morth Texas. About 100 people were injured. 

All of the dead – confirmed to all be adults — were from the Rancho Brazos neighborhood on the outskirts of Granbury where most of the homes were built in the past five years by residents themselves and the Christian charity group Habitat for Humanity. Granbury is a town of 8,000 people about 65 miles southwest of Dallas.

Officials on Thursday night released the names of the dead: Jose Tovas Alvarez, 34, Robert Whitehead, 60, Tommy Martin, 61, Marjari Davis, 82, Leo Stefanski, 83, and Glenda White, whose age wasn't known.  The identities of the missing were not made public.

“We’re going to keep on looking, we’re not going to give up until every piece of debris is turned over and we know that we’re good to go” Deeds said at a news briefing Thursday evening.

He said that 97 homes sustained damage, from slight to total destruction. Electricity and water were still out to those homes and he said it could be days before residents could return. 

“With the gas and electricity hazards we’re not going to take a chance in the area,” he said.

“It's rough, very rough. Everything's demolished," a resident told KXAS as she rushed away from the neighborhood with her arms around a child. "It was like hell."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, along with other state and local officials, will visit Granbury on Friday.

The National Weather Service in Dallas-Fort Worth said 16  tornadoes were confirmed to have ripped through north Texas.

The tornado that hit Granbury Wednesday night was rated an EF-4 by the National Weather Service, meaning that winds reached between 160 and 200 miles per hour. 

It was the first EF-4 in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area since 1994, National Weather Service spokesman Mark Fox said.

The tornadoes seemed to have caused less damage in Cleburne, where Mayor Scott Cain told KXAS. The town did “have the potential for some injuries,” Cain said.

Some witnesses have said the tornado that swept through Johnson County may have been as much as a mile wide. While that twister that hit Granbury was smaller, but it struck a more populated area, according to Fox.

People in the affected areas had a little more than the national average of 13 minutes warning before the tornadoes struck, according to the National Weather Service.

“The warning came well before the tornadoes,” Fox said. Residents of Montague County were alerted about 15 to 30 minutes before the storm struck, and in Hood County a warning was issued 25 minutes before the tornado touched down.

NBC News' John Newland and Matthew DeLuca contributed to this report.

Related:

• 6 dead, 7 missing as tornadoes rip through Texas
• Texas tornadoes destroy neighborhood built by residents, Habitat for Humanity

This story was originally published on Thu May 16, 2013 6:58 PM EDT

Amid the legislation and indignation sparked by the military's sexual abuse crisis, male rape survivors are stepping forward to remind officials that men are targeted more often than women inside a tough-guy culture that, they say, routinely deems male victims as “liars and trouble makers.”

The Pentagon estimates that last year 13,900 of the 1.2 million men on active duty endured sexual assault while 12,100 of the 203,000 women in uniform experienced the same crime — or 38 men per day versus 33 women per day. Yet the Defense Department also acknowledges “male survivors report at much lower rates than female survivors.”

“As a culture, we’ve somewhat moved past the idea that a female wanted this trauma to occur, but we haven’t moved past that for male survivors,” said Brian Lewis, a rape survivor who served in the Navy. “In a lot of areas of the military, men are still viewed as having wanted it or of being homosexual. That’s not correct at all. It’s a crime of power and control.

“But also, you’re instantly viewed as a liar and a troublemaker (when a man reports a sex crime), and there’s the notion that you have abandoned your shipmates, that you took a crap all over your shipmates, that you misconstrued their horseplay,” he added.

Lewis, who was raped by a male superior officer aboard a Navy ship in 2000, spoke Thursday at a press conference introducing a bill that seeks to strip serious sex assaults from the military’s chain of command. At that event, he said: “Too often male survivors are ignored and marginalized.”

“The biggest reasons men don’t come forward (with sex assault reports) are the fear of retaliation (from fellow troops), the fear of being viewed in a weaker light, and the fact there are very few, if any, services for male survivors,” Lewis told NBC News.

Men in the spotlight
All sexual assault response coordinators within the military are instructed to provide “gender-responsive, culturally competent and recovery-oriented” resources, said Cynthia O. Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman. 

“Based on that guidance, each of the services customizes its training and implementation specific to their service,” Smith said. DOD offers a 24/7 “safe helpline” providing anonymous victim support, and its staffers “have been trained to assist male victims.”

Still, the Defense Department acknowledges it must do more to help male victims.

“A focus of our prevention efforts over the next several months is specifically geared towards male survivors and will include (learning) why male survivors report at much lower rates than female survivors, and determining the unique support and assistance male survivors need,” Smith said.

The Pentagon “has reached out to organizations supporting male survivors for assistance and information to help inform our way ahead,” she added.

“I applaud that stand on behalf of male survivors,” Lewis said. “However, I would be interested in hearing what organizations they are partnering with considering there are none especially geared for male survivors of military sexual trauma.”

'Critical' part of process
At Protect Our Defenders, a leading advocacy group for male and female service members who've survived sexual assaults, president Nancy Parrish said she would welcome the chance to offer guidance to the Pentagon as it develops better programs to support male sex assault victims.

“As of yet, we have not been asked to participate in such an endeavor,” Parrish said. “For the success of the military efforts to end the ongoing epidemic of male and female military sexual assaults, it is critical that survivors are part of the process."

An annual DOD report on sexual abuse, released May 7, described separate attacks on two male soldiers who were shoved down by fellow troops then sodomized with a plastic bottle or broom handle.

Next month, a documentary called “Justice Denied” — which explores sexual assaults against men in the military — premiers at the Albuquerque Film and Media Experience.

Assaults on men have been “carefully hidden from the public and covered up,” not only by the victims themselves but also by superiors within the chain of command, contends the film’s producer and co-director Geri Lynn Weinstein-Matthews. “It’s time for men to have their voices heard. It’s time for them to stand up against these vicious attacks and against the deception of some of their commanding officers.” 

Related:

• Senators seek to reform military's 'unacceptable' sex abuse policies
• Gillibrand leads charge for protocol changes in sexual assault cases
• US military faces historic tipping point on rape epidemic
• Army sergeant assigned to sex-abuse prevention investigated for pimping, sexual assault
• Air Force's sex-abuse prevention honcho charged with sexual battery

A 31-year-old man was charged with kidnapping Thursday, a day after the mother of a snatched 4-year-old girl chased down a car and rammed it with her own.

Albuquerque police said David Jesus Hernandez ran away after the crash. According to authorities, the victim's mother did not realize he had pushed the child from his car while fleeing the apartment complex where the girl had been taken.

David Jesus Hernandez, 31, is wanted for questioning in a child kidnapping that took place Wednesday in Albuquerque.

A manhunt for Hernandez ended Thursday night when he turned himself in.

Hernandez was being held Friday on charges of kidnapping and child abuse, according to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque.

Police said they were investigating a "possible connection" between Wednesday's incident and one last week in which a 6-year-old girl was kidnapped, driven away in a car and sexually assaulted.

In the latest incident, the victim was playing in her yard about 6:30 p.m. when a man forced her into a silver Buick, police said. As he took off, some teenagers hanging around outside ran inside and alerted the child's mother, police said.

As she jumped into her own car to chase the Buick, the suspect pushed the little girl out of his vehicle. The mother didn't notice and kept going after the man.

"She was involved in a high-speed pursuit," Police Chief Ray Schultz said.

After tearing down several streets, the mother rammed the Buick to get it to stop, police said. The driver jumped out and fled on foot.

"This appears to be a complete stranger abduction," Schultz said.

The 4-year-old was found wandering near the apartment complex.

Last week's incident also involved a man driving a silver or gray car, police said.

This story was originally published on Thu May 16, 2013 2:16 PM EDT

A New York senator introduced a bill Thursday that aims to remove sex crimes from the military’s chain of command — a bid to transform an insulated culture that tends to dampen sex-assault reporting, leaving many victims feeling helpless or hopeless.

Under the Pentagon’s current justice system, less than 1 percent of accused sexual perpetrators in the military were convicted last year while during 2012 just 9.8 percent of sex-assault victims reported the incidents, according to a Department of Defense report. Many victims feel powerless because their superiors can control everything from whether a case proceeds to whether a guilty verdict is eventually overturned.

The new proposal by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., rides a rising tide of public anger over separate allegations that two service members tasked with curbing sexual misconduct within the armed forces had themselves committed sexual misconduct:

• A Fort Hood Army sergeant accused Tuesday of allegedly forcing at least one subordinate soldier into prostitution. There is suspicion that other senior non-commissioned officers were aware of these activities, but the extent of that remains unclear, a government official told NBC News;
• An Air Force officer arrested May 6 for alleged sexual battery. 

"When the officer in charge of preventing sexual assault in their ranks is himself arrested for sexual assault — clearly, the strategy we have in place is not working. Twice in just the last two weeks this has happened," Gillibrand said. 

Some service members have confided to Gillibrand, she said, that following sexual offenses committed against them, the military's current system forced them to seek permission from their perpetrators in order to take their cases to trial. 

"This is unacceptable — and is long overdue for change," Gillibrand said. 

Her push to revamp the military's machinery for the investigation and discipline of reported sexual assaults has bipartisan backing. Rep. Dan Benishek, R-Mich., said he will file a companion bill in the House. 

“Right now, too many sexual assaults in our military go unreported," Benishek said. "Many soldiers are uncomfortable reporting the details of these traumatic events. My daughter is a military veteran so I know exactly the kind of hard-working women we have in our armed forces. This situation is a travesty and we need to fix it now.

"We need to reform how the military handles sexual assault cases and make sure victims aren’t afraid to report a crime," he added. 

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was informed Tuesday about the allegations against the Fort Hood sergeant, leaving the Pentagon chief "frustrated, angered, and disappointed over these troubling allegations as well as the breakdown in discipline and standards they imply," said Cynthia Smith, a DoD spokeswoman. 

Hagel immediately directed every branch to "re-train, re-credential, and re-screen" all sexual assault prevention and response personnel and military recruiters — and he has "made it clear he has not ruled out any options for improving the military's response to sexual assault," Smith said.  

Under Gilliland's proposed legislation, any reported offense committed by a service member that’s punishable by confinement of one year or more would be handled not by branch and unit commanders — like now — but instead be funneled to independent military prosecutors. Her proposal also seeks to ensure that military commanders may not set aside a guilty finding.  

She began writing her bill — working with Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. — just two days after her impassioned critique of the military's desire to retain "convening authority" in sex crimes went viral last March. She since has emerged as one of the Senate's loudest proponents for wholesale Pentagon reform on the issue, calling for a format that's more parallel to the civilian legal system. 

Related:

• Gillibrand leads Senate charge for protocol changes in military sexual assault cases
• US military faces historic tipping point on rape epidemic
• Army sergeant assigned to sex-abuse prevention being investigated for pimping, sexual assault
• Air Force's sex-abuse prevention honcho charged with sexual battery
• Obama: 'No tolerance' for military sexual assault
• 'Every American should be outraged:' Military sees sharp increase in sex assault cases

SEATTLE -- A 10-year-old Washington state boy was sentenced on Wednesday to up to 5 1/2 years in a juvenile detention facility for his role in a foiled plot to rape and kill a girl at his school and harm other children.

The boy was charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, juvenile firearm possession and witness tampering in connection with a plot in February at an elementary school in Colville, in the state's northeast.

Prosecutors said he pleaded guilty last month to all charges.

Stevens County Superior Court Judge Allen Nielson sentenced the fifth-grader to a minimum of just over three years in juvenile detention and a maximum of nearly 5 1/2 years, Stevens County prosecutor Tim Rasmussen said.

An 11-year-old boy accused of joining in the plot is charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, possession of a dangerous weapon in the form of a knife at school and tampering with a witness, Rasmussen added.

The 11-year-old suspect faces a court hearing later this month.

The 10-year-old boy will serve his sentence at the Echo Glen children's juvenile center in Snoqualmie, Wash., 45 miles east of Seattle. As of Thursday he had already spent nearly 100 days in a local juvenile detention facility, Rasmussen said.

The boy told investigators he and his friend had planned to kill a former fifth-grade girlfriend because she was "rude" and "always made fun" of him and friends, according to court documents.

They plotted to entice the girl away from their elementary school, the court papers stated.

The 10-year-old had taken a Remington Model 1911 pistol that originally belonged to his grandfather from his older brother's room, according to court records.

The boys had also packed ammunition and a knife, but they were stopped on Feb. 7 shortly after they boarded a school bus, Rasmussen said.

A fourth-grade student spotted the knife and reported it to a teacher's aide, Rasmussen said. The names of six other targeted classmates were on a list the boys had, Rasmussen said.

Related:

Prosecutors: 5th-grade boys plotted to kill classmate

Ex-con accused of killing grandparents in custody

Wash. inmates help rescue boys from creek

North Texas residents took in the devastation on Thursday wreaked by a series of tornadoes that killed six and injured dozens more in what Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds described as a “nightmare” scenario.

Seven of 14 people who had previously been unaccounted for had checked in by Thursday morning, Deeds said at a press conference on Thursday. About 100 people were reported injured and as many as 250 were homeless after the swarm of twisters that ripped up trees and knocked down homes on Wednesday evening.

The six deceased were all adults, Deeds said. There have been no reports of injuries to first responders, the sheriff said.

“Everything’s running smooth, everything’s looking good,” Deeds said of recovery efforts on Thursday.

Full coverage from NBCDFW.com

Granbury, a town of 8,000 about 65 miles southwest of Dallas, was thought to be among the worst-hit areas. Images of the town revealed leveled homes, badly damaged cars, uprooted trees and downed power lines.

Nineteen buildings and 17 mobile homes were destroyed in Hood County, the sheriff’s office said in an initial damage assessment on Thursday. Seventeen more buildings showed major damage, while more than 40 showed minor damage including to windows and roofing shingles.

“It's rough, very rough. Everything's demolished," a resident told KXAS as she hurried away from the neighborhood with her arms around a child. "It was like hell."

Mike Fuentes / AP

Johnny Ortiz, left, and James South carry Miguel Morales, who was injured in a tornado, to an ambulance in Granbury, Texas, on Wednesday.

The six people who were confirmed dead were in the Rancho Brazos neighborhood on the outskirts of Granbury, Deeds said. He added that the homes there were mostly built within the past five years by Habitat for Humanity.

“I had three different storms that came through but this is the worst one,” Deeds said.

The tornadoes swept through the towns of Granbury and nearby Cleburne, causing “heavy damage,” Deeds said. The search for other people who might have gotten caught up in the storm continued with day break.

“I’ve been assured by my deputies on the scene that they’re pretty confident with the six that they found, but there was a report that two of these people that they found were not even near their homes. So we’re going to have to search the area out there,” Deeds said.

The tornado that hit Granbury was rated EF-4 by the National Weather Service in a preliminary report, meaning that winds reached between 160 and 200 miles per hour.

The tornadoes seemed to have caused less damage in Cleburne, where Mayor Scott Cain told KXAS. The town did “have the potential for some injuries,” Cain said.

The National Weather Service reported three tornadoes across Montague and Hood counties. Storm surveys to determine the extent of the damage were planned for Hood, Johnson, Montague, and Parker counties on Thursday, the weather service’s Dallas-Fort Worth office announced. At least ten tornadoes touched ground across Texas on Wednesday evening according to Mark Fox, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Some witnesses have said the tornado that swept through Johnson County may have been as much as a mile wide. While that twister that hit Granbury was smaller, it struck a more populated area and was “just as destructive,” according to Fox.

People in the affected areas had a little more than the national average of 13 minutes warning before the tornadoes struck, according to the National Weather Service.

“The warning came well before the tornadoes,” Fox said. Residents of Montague County were alerted about 15 to 30 minutes before the storm struck, and in Hood County a warning was issued 25 minutes before the tornado touched down.

Nearly forty patients were taken to Lake Granbury Medical Center and 18 discharged, with the majority of injuries including cuts, broken bones, and some head injuries. A total of eight patients were admitted to the emergency room at the Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth. Two of the patients were in critical condition as of 4 a.m. local time.

“I’ve been at LGMC for over 12 years, and we have never seen a community catastrophe with as many injuries as we did through last night,” said Kyle McCombs, chief of staff at Lake Granbury Medical Center, in a press release. “However, these are the types of disasters that our medical team continuously prepares for.”

Relocation centers have been set up Granbury Methodist and First Christian churches in Hood County.

The tornado outbreak was by far the year's deadliest, the weather service said. Prior to Wednesday night, there had been three fatal tornadoes this year, killing one person each in Georgia, Mississippi and eastern Texas.

Anita Foster of the American Red Cross, which opened two shelters in Granbury, told KXAS that 42 people had spent the night in the shelters. She added that only a quarter of people who are left homeless in such disasters typically seek shelter with the Red Cross, indicating that many more had been affected.

"We’re going to have a lot of people who are going to need some help," she said, adding, "It was a really frightening evening. It was a devastating event for our community."

The tornadoes, normal for this time of year, formed as the warm, moist air of the Texas springtime encountered an upper level storm between Wichita and Dallas, Fox said. A few thunderstorms hung over the state on Thursday but the weather system headed eastward for the most part, he said.

Severe weather was expected to sweep into some parts of the Midwest and Plains states with the potential for tornadoes heading into the weekend, the Weather Channel reported.

About 60 departures have been canceled and 70 flights diverted from Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport, spokesman David Magana told the Associated Press.

NBC News' John Newland and Andrew Rafferty contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Thu May 16, 2013 12:39 AM EDT

Daniel Holmes for NBC News

Roseann Sdoia, who had her right leg amputated after the marathon bombing, uses a hand-cycle outside Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Charlestown, Mass.

BOSTON – They've been taking their first steps, pushing through tough rehabilitation workouts and venturing into crowds again.

One month after blasts at the Boston Marathon killed three and injured 265, victims of the attack are trying to adjust to a "different normal" -- as one of them put it.

For many, that includes recovering from multiple wounds, such as severe burns, hearing loss, brain injuries and nerve and vascular damage. At least 15 have undergone amputations.

"The majority are not isolated to just having amputation but more of a complex poly-trauma," said Dr. David Crandell of Boston's Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, which has been treating some 30 of the wounded who require ongoing in-patient care, including most of the amputees. 

Some have undergone multiple surgeries, such as brothers Paul and J.P. Norden. Others are waiting for serious injuries to heal, like Pete DiMartino, who lost 90 percent of his right Achilles' tendon and suffered multiple broken bones in his ankles. Yet others, such as Roseann Sdoia, who had an above-knee amputation on her right leg, are embarking on the next phase of their recovery by going home. 

Though the contours of recovery vary among those injured in the attack, for a number of them the journey remains without end and uncertain. Even among those who kept their limbs, nerve damage can add variability to the process.

"Their ultimate outcome may not be determined for several months or even a year," said Crandell, medical director of the center's amputee program.

On various floors of the hospital, the wounded undergo exams, physical and occupational rehabilitation, or attend group or individual mental health therapy sessions.

Bartender itching to go home
One of those recovering at Spaulding is DiMartino, who pushes himself to go further in each rehabilitation session so he can go home as soon as possible.

Daniel Holmes for NBC News

Pete DiMartino, of Rochester, N.Y., suffered serious leg injuries during the bomb attack on the Boston Marathon.

The 28-year-old bartender from Rochester, N.Y., went to the marathon with friends and family to cheer on his mother, who was competing in the city's iconic road race. His left shoe was blown off in the blast.

In addition to the Achilles and ankle injuries, DiMartino suffered second-degree burns on his left leg and back, and had shrapnel buried in both legs. Doctors took muscle from his forearm to replace the skin, soft tissue and muscle he lost around his right ankle.

"The injuries he's had will probably affect the way his leg works for the rest of his life," said his doctor at Spaulding, Dr. Jeffrey Schneider, medical director of burn and trauma rehabilitation. "What he has been through is tremendous."

DiMartino arrived at Spaulding on May 2. Though he can't put weight on his right foot, he took his first steps on the left one on Friday, getting up on crutches to take an exhausting 90-second walk. He followed up on Monday by walking for two minutes, and then a third time he made it for five minutes. 

"Seeing those small victories just makes me feel so much better about everything," DiMartino, whose girlfriend and older sister were also wounded, said from his hospital bed. 

"It's challenging to say the least, but exhilarating at the same time," he said. "I'm advancing and I'm getting up and I'm doing these things to make my stay here shorter. … A step at a time."

On his right calf, DiMartino has a triangular-shaped contraption -- an external fixator -- with metal pins drilled into bone to stabilize the area and keep his ankle from moving. He hopes to head home -- where his sister is recovering -- in two weeks, but Schneider said the timeframe is not clear. His girlfriend is one of six people still being treated in other Boston hospitals, and the two video chat daily.

"I would really love to run the marathon next year," he said. "Every day that I'm down in the gym working out, I push myself a little bit harder than they tell me to. They tell me to do one more, I do two or three more. I know it's not a lot, but I'm just always pushing myself a little bit harder just so that I can get out of the wheelchair faster, I can get off the crutches faster ... and then I can start training."

Brothers united in recovery
Paul Norden and his older brother, J.P., went to the marathon to cheer on friends running in the race, and each lost part of a leg in the blasts. 

Elise Amendola / AP

J.P. Norden, right, followed by his brother, Paul, both suffered limb-loss after the Boston Marathon bombing.

Treated at different hospitals, the close-knit brothers struggled under the separation. They were reunited, staying under the same roof, last Friday, when J.P. joined Paul at Spaulding. They shared an embrace from their wheelchairs after talking to reporters.

"It's the best thing ever, it's great," J.P., 33, said of being around Paul, 31.

"It was just so tough," Paul said of the separation. "I see him every day of my life ... it's just amazing to be back to normal."

But their joint stint at the rehab center will be short-lived. Paul, a union sheet metal worker who had his right leg amputated above the knee, will leave on Thursday to start the next phase of his recovery while J.P., an unemployed roofer who had his right leg amputated above the knee, will continue his work at Spaulding. 

"We're competitive, so it stinks to see him leave," J.P. quipped, with Paul adding: "I'll visit him every day."

The brothers' doctor, Dr. Ross Zafonte, said Paul, who had been in a coma for the first five days after the attacks, was at a point where he could be a little more independent and go through outpatient training.

"His brother is not yet quite at that stage of the game," he added, "... and is undergoing a little bit more of the healing process. ... but he will get there."

Though the brothers said they'd had some bad days after the attacks, they both expressed optimism about what is to come. The pair will recuperate at their mother's home in Wakefield.

"I'm ready to move on. I feel great. It's just a different normal," Paul said. "It's exciting to know I'm going home real soon."

"It sounds weird but it's probably changed me for the better a little bit," J.P. said. "It made me realize how great people are. … so I'm happy, overall. I really am."

Old routines renewed
Outside of Spaulding on Monday, Roseann Sdoia took off on a bike that she powered with her arms. Her last in-patient day at Spaulding was Tuesday, and her occupational therapist, Samantha Geary, wanted to give her a fun rehabilitation send-off.

Daniel Holmes / for NBC News

"I have so much appreciation and gratitude for everything that everybody's done," said Roseann Sdoia, who has gone to her Boston home to continue her recovery.

The pair had already visited Sdoia's second-floor apartment in Boston's North End to test out how she will fare on one leg. And they tried out the cobblestone streets of her neighborhood with Sdoia navigating on crutches. She met a neighbor, who offered to pay for a grocery delivery service, and another greeted her with kisses. 

Sdoia, who runs the residential portfolio for a development firm, has had similarly warm embraces from her friends and family, who have joined her at physical and occupational therapy, and kept a steady presence in her room to cheer her spirits.

"I have so much appreciation and gratitude for everything that everybody's done between donations and just time that ... friends have spent with me, endless hours just being here to make sure I'm not alone going through this," she said, breaking down in tears. 

Sdoia admits she has had some rough days since the attacks and is not sure what to expect when she leaves the safety net of the rehabilitation center. But she figures more emotions will emerge when she departs. 

"I honestly don't really know what happened to me. I mean, I know I was in a bombing, I know I lost part of my leg. I know that, but I guess I really won't know exactly what happened again until I go home, and I'm back in daily life, and dealing with getting around on the crutches and traversing ... things that aren't handicap accessible," she said. "It's going to be a challenge and I think at that point it will hit me."

She has re-started familiar routines, like watching the 10 p.m. news and tuning into the radio in the morning. Sdoia hopes she will get a prosthetic in a few weeks, which she said would be "liberating."

"So the crutches are temporary," she said, "and, in my head, so is my disability, is how I look at it."

How to help:
For a general fund to help victims, the One Fund, created by Boston's mayor and the governor of Massachusetts, is accepting donations.

To donate to individuals featured in this story, here are funds they have set up:
Pete DiMartino
Roseann Sdoia
Norden brothers

Slideshow: Boston bombings

Heightened security, empty streets, and memorials mark the the days after the Boston Marathon bombings.

Launch slideshow

Related:

Full coverage of the Boston Marathon tragedy on NBCNews.com

Yonhap via Reuters

Kenneth Bae, 44, was convicted of "hostile acts" against North Korea.

An American tour operator sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea has begun his sentence at a “special prison,” state media reported Wednesday.

Kenneth Bae, 44, stood trial last month accused of “hostile acts” against the repressive regime.

Bae, who is from Washington state, was convicted of an attempt to topple the government through “state subversion” according to a brief report on the Korean Central News Agency's website.

“Pae Jun Ho, an American citizen, started his life at a special prison on Tuesday,” the report said, referring to him by his Korean name.

He is one of at least three other U.S. citizens who are also devout Christians to have been detained by North Korea in recent years.

While North Korea's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, in practice only sanctioned services are tolerated.

Washington state Rep. Cindy Ryu told The Herald newspaper in December that Bae might have been doing missionary work in North Korea.

"Many of us are third- and fourth-generation Christians and many of our pastors are originally from North Korea," Ryu said. "We want to visit our home country, but in North Korea you cannot say you are a missionary."

A Facebook page has been set up titled “Remember Ken Bae, Detained in North Korea.”

Related:

• North Korea: Detained American tourist has 'admitted his crime'
• Detained American, Internet freedom on agenda as Google boss visits North Korea
• Full North Korea coverage from NBC News

AP

This combination of undated photos show, from left, Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, Salah Osman Ahmed and Omer Abdi Mohamed, three of the four ethnic Somalians sentenced Tuesday for aiding the al Qaeda-linked rebel group al-Shabab.

MINNEAPOLIS -- A federal judge sentenced four men to prison on Tuesday for helping recruit young men in Minnesota to travel to Somalia and fight for the militant group al-Shabab.

Investigators believe about 20 young, ethnic Somali men left Minnesota from 2007 to 2009 to go to Somalia to fight for al-Shabab, which the United States has designated a terrorist organization.

Three men who cooperated with investigators were each sentenced to three years and a fourth man was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

"These defendants, by providing material support to a designated terrorist organization, broke both the law and the hearts of family members across the Twin Cities," U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones said in a statement.

Eighteen men were charged after a four-year investigation. Eight were convicted and the rest are thought to be fugitives or to have been killed in Somalia while fighting for al-Shabab.

On Tuesday, Omer Abdi Mohamed, 28, was sentenced to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty in July 2011 to one count of conspiring to provide material support to co-conspirators who intended to murder, kidnap, or maim Ethiopian and Somali government troops.

Mohamed, of Minneapolis, admitted that he helped recruits get plane tickets and helped to raise money for them to travel to Somalia to fight with al-Shabab in 2007.

Three men who cooperated with investigators were each sentenced to three years in prison by Chief Judge Michael Davis in Minneapolis federal court. Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, Salah Osman Ahmed, and Ahmed Hussein Mahamud had each pleaded guilty to one count of providing material support to al-Shabab.

Isse, 29, and Ahmed, 30, both of Minneapolis, admitted traveling to Somalia in December 2007, where they both stayed at al-Shabab safe-houses or training camps. They left Somalia together in the spring of 2008.

Mahamud, 28, a Westerville, Ohio, resident who had lived in a Minneapolis suburb, admitted in February 2012 that he helped provide al-Shabab with money and people from 2008 through February 2011.

Isse, Ahmed, and Mahamud testified at the trial of another man, Mahamud Said Omar, who was sentenced on Monday to 20 years in prison for his 2009 conviction on five counts for providing money and aiding the travel of men to Somalia for al-Shabab.

Omar, a Somali citizen who lived legally in the United States, was accused of aiding al-Shabab from September 2007 through August 2009. He was accused of providing hundreds of dollars to al-Shabab for assault rifles and of helping six men travel from Minnesota to Somalia in the fall of 2008.

Also on Monday, Davis sentenced Minneapolis resident Kamal Said Hassan, 28, to 10 years in prison. He admitted going to Somalia, where he trained at an al-Shabab camp and participated in an attack on Ethiopian soldiers, prosecutors said.

Hassan pleaded guilty to two counts of aiding al-Shabab and one of lying to investigators.

The earliest of the travelers left the United States in October and December 2007, followed by more in 2008 and 2009. Two of the travelers, Shirwa Ahmed and Farah Mohamed Beledi are believed to have blown themselves up in attacks in Somalia.

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