The image that lingered in many people’s minds after the devastating double bomb attack at the Boston marathon in 2013, was that of a severely injured young man being pushed in a wheelchair by a stranger clad in a cowboy hat.
The distressing photograph depicted the bloody aftermath of the terrorist attack which killed three and injured at least 264 - but it wasn't without controversy, and was deplored by some for being exploitative and too graphic.
Jeff Bauman - a then 27-year-old Costco deli worker - was the wounded victim in the picture, who, hours after it was taken, had both his legs amputated above the knee.
What followed was a long and brutal rehabilitation towards recovery, a journey Bauman recounts in his moving 2014 memoir Stronger, which has now been adapted into a critically-acclaimed film starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
Gyllenhaal stars as Bauman in the movie which follows the aftermath of the blast and Bauman's strength and remarkable recovery.
This is the heartbreaking, yet inspirational, story behind the film.
The day of the bombing
On April 15, 2013, Jeff Bauman went to watch his then-girlfriend Erin Hurley run the Boston marathon with two of her roommates, Remy Lawler and Michele Mahoney (via The New York Time's Beyond the Finish Line - for which NYT photographer Josh Haner won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography).
“You better win," were Bauman's initial parting words to Hurley as he dropped her off, before the group later agreed to meet up at the the finish line on Boylston Street near Copley Square once Hurley had finished.
It was while he was looking out for his girlfriend a few hours into the race, that a young man behind him suddenly caught his eye.
The man was wearing a dark heavy coat, a baseball cap pulled tightly over his head, sunglasses, and a backpack. His outfit was incongruous with the warm, sunny weather, and he looked out of place. When Bauman looked back again, the man was gone, but his backpack had been left on the street.
Moments later, there was a huge explosion. Bauman saw a flash and heard a bang, and suddenly found himself lying on the sidewalk. He thought at first it could have been a firework gone awry.
After sitting up, he saw bodies and blood all around him, and Hurley's roommate Mahoney a few feet away, trying to move towards him. She couldn't move her leg [she lost part of her left leg in the explosion, but doctors managed to salvage her foot], but she looked down at Bauman's legs and then back at his face, prompting him to do the same.
He looked back at her in horror. After lying back down on the street in sheer agony and terror, he was tended to by an emergency room physician named Allan Panter.
Panter pulled him out of the crowd and made a tourniquet around his right leg, before rushing off to help another injured woman laying on the ground.
Next, a man in a cowboy hat named Carlos Arredondo rushed to his aid, lifted him into a wheelchair, and pushed him towards a medical tent and into an ambulance.
Hours after arriving at hospital, Bauman had both his legs amputated at the knee. He was also being continuously resuscitated by doctors because he had lost copious amounts of blood.
The following day, he underwent another operation to drain the internal fluids formed by the blunt trauma of the brutal attack.
Despite all of the operations, the blunt trauma, and the physical and mental pain of losing his legs, Bauman had managed to get word to the authorities that he had seen one of the suspected terrorists. It was his detailed description of attacker Tamerlan Tsarnaev which enabled the FBI to narrow down the list of suspects that had been pictured in the area.
What happened to the terrorists?
On April 18, three days after detonating two bombs within 12 seconds and 210 yards apart, Chechen-American brothers Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev went on the run after the FBI released images of them as the two suspects wanted in connection with the attack.
On April 19, the brothers fatally shot policeman Sean A. Collier six times, in a failed attempt to steal his gun. This took the total number of people they killed to four.
After a shootout with police in the Boston suburb of Watertown, 26-year-old Tamerlan, was killed after he was run over by his brother Dzhokhar as he tried to escape police. Hours later, Dzhokhar was discovered bleeding in a dry-docked boat by its owner, and was arrested by police.
Dzhokhar told police that he and his brother had been motivated by extremist Islamic beliefs, and had learned how to build bombs by logging onto the online English-language magazine of the affiliate of Al Qaeda in Yemen (via The New York Times).
On June 24, Dzhokhar was sentenced to the death penalty, and is serving his sentence in a super-maximum security prison in Fremont County, Colorado.
Jeff's life after the attack
Bauman was in hospital for four weeks, during which he received prosthetic legs.
The following year, Bauman became engaged to his girlfriend Erin Hurley - who had supported him throughout his rehabilitation - with the couple welcoming their first child, a girl named Nora, in July 2014. They married four months later, in November.
A year after the bomb attack, Bauman returned to work in Costco and released his memoir Stronger, co-written with author Bret Witter.
Sadly, Bauman and Hurley announced their separation earlier this year in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.
"Jeff and Erin have decided that it is best to move forward as friends," a spokesperson for the couple confirmed.
"Though their relationship has changed, their admiration, love and mutual respect for each other will never waver. They are dedicated to loving and parenting their daughter, Nora, and ask for privacy."
As a credited co-writer of the film, Bauman has been joining Gyllenhaal on the promotional trail for Stronger, which is released in the US on September 22 (and in the UK on December 5).
Returning back to the iconic image of Bauman being helped to safety by Arredondo - which turned Bauman into an American hero and inspired his astonishing story - Bauman has previously told The Guardian: "The story the Wheelchair Photo tells is this: two losers set off bombs, but hundreds of people risked their lives to rush to our aid.
"I wish I wasn't that man, but not because I wish I wasn't in the photograph. I just wish I still had my legs.
"But I'm glad people have an image to remind them of the most important lesson from 15 April 2013: that good people will triumph over the cowards and idiots every time."
* Stronger is set for release in the UK on December 5
Naomi Gordon is news writer mainly covering entertainment news with a focus on celebrity interviews and television.
