BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — Eric Robert Rudolph bombed a Birmingham abortion clinic 20 years ago today, January 29, 2018. The bomb killed a police officer and severely injured a nurse who worked at the clinic.
Twenty years later, that same nurse, Emily Lyons, refuses to be a victim.
“There’s still nails in my legs… and probably more gravel,” Lyons said. “I had a piece of circuit board taken out of me also.”
She can tell you exactly how long she was in the hospital — “Eight weeks, two days, five hours and a few minutes,” she says — and that she’s had 37 surgeries.
But she doesn’t remember the day that it happened.
“I got a speeding ticket that week and [her husband] Jeffrey didn’t know about it. He came home the night before the bomb. And that’s all I remember. I don’t remember going to work or anything,” said Lyons.
However, Lyons said they’ve been told how it happened.
“I parked in my usual place, I went up the steps,” she started.
Lyons said at that point a police officer, Robert “Sande” Sanderson, stopped her.
“He was always pleasant with us, soft spoken, did his job. He did not agree with choice but he knew that people needed to be protected,” Lyons remembered.
She said Sanderson told her to back up.
“When he went out with his nightstick, that’s when Rudolph pushed the button from across the street,” Lyons said.
That moment changed her life forever, but she said surviving has made her stronger.
“He made me a louder, stronger person,” said Lyons. “I’m out in the world. I can do things. And we try to do as much as we can.”
The attack was the first fatal bombing at an abortion clinic in the United States.
