Brussels survivor describes near-death moments after blasts
BRUSSELS -- "I am thinking I got to make it, I got to make it. I got to see my daughters again, I got to see my girls."
From his hospital bed, Sebastien Bellin shared how close he came to death.
"You're about to die and you're just like no, no, no, no. And I can remember just fixating on a point in the ceiling and just being like 'OK, no, they're not gonna get me. They're not gonna get me.'"
Bellin played college baseketball for Marist in New York, and Oakland University in Michigan. He's also a former star center for a Belgian pro-team.
He was walking to airport security when the first bomb went off. The power of the blast sent the six-foot-ten athlete flying more than fifty feet through the air.
"I remember falling down, and my hip just exploding. I looked down and you know I see like massive bones just sticking out and then I hear the second explosion," Bellin described.
"I think that's really what saved me because I was already on the ground when the second one went off."
Helpless and bleeding out, a stranger dragged him to safety.
"He's the one that put kind of a cloth to stop the bleeding on my leg because my leg was completely detached and I was screaming. Once I made it to the ambulance, I knew I was going to be OK. So that was the first relief, like OK, you made it."
Bellin is recovering from surgery and is looking forward to being reunited with his American wife and two young daughters again.
"I talked to [one of my daughters] this morning and she wanted to know if I had band-aids all over my cuts, you know? And I told her I had all the band-aids necessary. I got amazing kids, and that's really what got me through."
