Paralyzed Bride Jennifer Darmon Walks Down Aisle

Jennifer Darmon walked down the aisle on her wedding day this weekend, which was a particularly moving moment since she has been confined to a wheel chair since a crippling car crash in 2008.



On Saturday, the radiant bride strode to the altar with the help of leg braces and a decorated metal walker. That short but momentous stroll came after years of intense therapy and a vow she made to ABC's "World News" March 25.

"You know, picturing your wedding, you don't picture rolling down the aisle," she said after she was chosen as the "World News" Person of the Week. "You picture the walk with your dad. It's the most important thing. I will be walking down the aisle. It's not an if or a maybe. It's absolutely going to happen."

Darmon, 28, made good on her promise and said "I do" to Mike Belawetz, 25 this past Saturday.

"It's so nice for everyone to see the end result. All the work I've put into it over the last couple of years," Darmon told ABC News affiliate WXYZ after the ceremony.

"I'm proud of my wife," Belawetz told WXYZ, the ABC affiliate in Detroit, after his wedding. "Her accomplishments and it just feels really great to be here today."

Darmon was a bank teller from Windsor, Canada, and Belawetz, was a shy paramedic who did more than his share of banking. The year was 2006 and Belawetz was going to the bank three times a week.

"Obviously she's a very, very pretty girl, which was the main attraction," he said, and that "kept me going to the bank."

They eventually started dating, and falling in love. Then tragedy struck in 2008.

They were on a road trip with friends when an oncoming car struck their van head-on. Everyone was able to get out of the vehicle after the crash, except for Darmon, who couldn't move. Being a paramedic, Belawetz was able to move her from the car. As soon as he ran his hand down her spine, he knew that his worst fears may be confirmed.

"I couldn't feel my legs," Darmon told ABC News. "I went into hysterics. I was screaming and crying and not really knowing what was going on." After getting checked out at the hospital, doctors told her she would never walk again.

She endured numerous surgeries and grueling three-hour physical therapy sessions three times a week. She made the 45-minute drive from her home in Windsor, Canada, to the Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan in Detroit in her car, which had been modified so she could accelerate using a hand crank. All the while, she wondered whether this was too much for Belawetz.

"I told him a few times, 'You don't have to stay if this is something you don't think you want in your life for the rest of your life,'" Darmon said. "I figured that I would spare him."

Belawetz never left her side, staying through every small step and medical milestone.

"The accident made me realize that if there is something you want to do, do it while you can," he said. "If you have people close to you, let them know."

And he did, proposing to Darmon on their four year anniversary as a couple.

ABC News' Enjoli Francis and James Wang contributed to this article.

Veteran Advocate Kills Self After War Tours

WASHINGTON – Handsome and friendly, Clay Hunt so epitomized a vibrant Iraq veteran that he was chosen for a public service announcement reminding veterans that they aren't alone.

The 28-year-old former Marine corporal earned a Purple Heart after taking a sniper's bullet in his left wrist. He returned to combat in Afghanistan. Upon his return home, he lobbied for veterans on Capitol Hill, road-biked with wounded veterans and performed humanitarian work in Haiti and Chile.

Then, on March 31, Hunt bolted himself in his Houston apartment and shot himself.

Friends and family say he was wracked with survivor's guilt, depression and other emotional struggles after combat.

Hunt's death has shaken many veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those who knew him wonder why someone who seemed to be doing all the right things to deal with combat-related issues is now dead.

"We know we have a problem with vets' suicide, but this was really a slap in the face," said Matthew Pelak, 32, an Iraq veteran who worked with Hunt in Haiti as part of the nonprofit group Team Rubicon.

After news of Hunt's death spread, workers from the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors met with veterans visiting Washington for the annual lobbying effort by the nonprofit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans, or IAVA. A year earlier, Hunt had been with other veterans in dark suits calling on Congress to improve the disability claims process.

He had appeared in the group's ads encouraging veterans to seek support from an online network of fellow veterans.

Snapshots posted on Facebook reflect a mostly grinning Hunt. In one, he has a beard and is surrounded by Haitian kids. A second shows him on the Capitol steps with fellow veterans. There's a shot of him from the back on a bike using his right arm to help push another bicyclist who is helping to guide an amputee in a specially modified bike.

Friends and family say Hunt suffered from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. But with his boundless energy and countless friends, he came across as an example of how to live life after combat.

"I think everybody saw him as the guy that was battling it, but winning the battle every day," said Jacob Wood, 27, a friend who served with Hunt in the Marines and in Haiti with Team Rubicon.

But some knew he was grieving over several close friends in the Marines who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"He was very despondent about why he was alive and so many people he served with directly were not alive," said John Wordin, 48, the founder of Ride 2 Recovery, a program that uses bicycling to help veterans heal physically and mentally.

In 2007, while in Iraq with the Marine's 2nd Battalion, 7th Regiment, Hunt heard over the radio that his 20-year-old bunkmate had died in a roadside bombing. Hunt later wrote online about sleeping in his bunkmate's bed. "I just wanted to be closer to him, I guess. But I couldn't — he was gone."

A month later, Hunt was pinned by enemy fire in his truck as a fellow Marine, shot in the throat by a sniper, lay nearby. Hunt wrote that seeing his friend placed in a helicopter, where he died, is "a scene that plays on repeat in my head nearly every day, and most nights as well."

Three days later, a sniper's bullet missed Hunt's head by inches and hit his wrist. He didn't immediately leave Iraq. His parents say Hunt asked to fly to a military hospital in Germany a day later so he could accompany a fellow Marine who was shot in both legs.

"I know he's seen some traumatic stuff in his time and I guess he holds that to himself," said Marine Sgt. Oscar Garza, 26, who served with Hunt in Iraq. "He was a very compassionate Marine, a very passionate person, one of the few people that I know that has a big heart and feels a lot of people's pain and makes it his own."

Hunt's mother, Susan Selke, said after Hunt was wounded, she'd hoped her son would get out of the military. Instead, he went to school to be a scout-sniper and went to Afghanistan. He seemed to do well. He was honorably discharged in 2009, married and enrolled at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

He was frustrated by the Veterans Affairs Department's handling of his disability claim. He also piled up thousands of dollars in credit card debt as he waited for his GI Bill payments. Hunt found an outlet to help improve the system by doing work with IAVA. He helped build bikes for Ride 2 Recovery and participated in long rides.

Using his military training, he went to Haiti several times and Chile once to help with the countries' earthquake relief efforts. He proudly told his parents of splinting an infant's leg, and after meeting a young orphaned boy in Haiti named D'James, tried to persuade his family to adopt him.

"If I had one thing to say to my fellow veterans, it would be this: Continue to serve, even though we have taken off our uniforms," Hunt wrote in an online testimonial for Team Rubicon. "No matter how great or small your service is, it is desired and needed by the world we live in today."

Hunt's friends say he was an idealist and voiced frustration that he couldn't make changes overnight. He also questioned why troops were still dying.

"He really was looking for someone to tell him what it was he went over to do and why those sacrifices were made," Wood said.

Last year, Hunt's life took a downward spiral. His marriage ended, he dropped out of school and he began to have suicidal thoughts, his mother said. She said Hunt sought counseling from the VA and moved in temporarily with Wordin in California.

Things seemed to improve for Hunt in recent months after he returned to his hometown of Houston to be near family.

He got a construction job, leased an apartment, bought a truck and began dating. He called friends to discuss the possibility of re-enlisting. In the days before he died, he hung out with friends, and he had plans the following weekend to do a Ride 2 Recovery bike ride. He even told Garza he couldn't wait to see him at a Fourth of July reunion with other Marines.

Then he was dead.

"Clay was always a fighter," Wordin said. "He was always a guy to stick things out and he basically quit life, and I was mad that he felt he had to do that at that particular time."

Hunt's friends and family count him a casualty of war — just like his buddies who died in the battlefield.

Islamic Militants Assassinate the Only Christian Member of Pakistan's Cabinet

A paramilitary soldier examines the damaged car of slain Pakistan's government minister for religious minorities Shahbaz Bhatti, outside the emergency ward of a local hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan, Wednesday, March 2, 2011. Gunmen shot and killed Mr. Bhatti Wednesday, the latest attack on a high-profile figure threatened by Muslim militants for urging reform of harsh blasphemy laws that impose the death penalty for insulting Islam. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)


ISLAMABAD (AP) — Assailants purportedly sent by al Qaeda and the Taliban killed the only Christian member of Pakistan’s federal Cabinet Wednesday, spraying his car with bullets outside his mother’s driveway. It was the second assassination in two months of a high-profile opponent of blasphemy laws that impose the death penalty for insulting Islam.

The killing of Shahbaz Bhatti, a 42-year-old Roman Catholic, further undermines Pakistan’s shaky image as a moderate Islamic state and could deepen the political turmoil in this nuclear-armed, U.S.-allied state where militants frequently stage suicide attacks.

The Vatican said the assassination shows that the pope’s warnings about the danger to Christians in the region are fully justified.

Mr. Bhatti, a campaigner for human rights causes, had apparently been aware of the danger he was in and left a video-taped message with the British Broadcasting Corp. and the Al Jazeera satellite TV station to be broadcast in the event of his death.

In the farewell statement, Mr. Bhatti said he was threatened by the Taliban and al Qaeda, but that this would not deter him from speaking for “oppressed and marginalized persecuted Christians and other minorities” in Pakistan. “I will die to defend their rights,” he said on the tape. “These threats and these warnings cannot change my opinions and principles.”

Despite the threats, Mr. Bhatti, who had been assigned bodyguards, was without protection when he visited his mother in the capital of Islamabad on Wednesday afternoon, police said. The politician had just pulled out of the driveway of the house, where he frequently stayed, when three men standing nearby opened fire, said Gulam Rahim, a witness.

Two of the men opened the door of the car and tried to pull Mr. Bhatti out, Mr. Rahim said, while a third man fired his Kalashnikov rifle repeatedly into the dark-colored Toyota, shattering the windows. The gunmen then sped away in a white Suzuki Mehran car, said Mr. Rahim who took shelter behind a tree. Mr. Bhatti was dead on arrival at an area hospital, while his driver was not harmed.

In leaflets left at the scene of the shooting, al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban Movement in Punjab province claimed responsibility. They blamed the government for putting Mr. Bhatti, an “infidel Christian,” in charge of an unspecified committee, apparently referring to one said to be reviewing the blasphemy laws. The government has repeatedly said such a committee does not exist.

“With the blessing of Allah, the mujahedeen will send each of you to hell,” said the note, which did not name any other targets.

Government officials condemned the killing, but made no reference to the blasphemy law controversy.


Photo on Right: Shahbaz Bhatti, then head of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, displays a threatening letter which a Christian resident of Charsadda town received, during a press conference in Islamabad, Pakistan, on May 16, 2007. Mr. Bhatti, now a federal government minister, was shot and killed by gunmen on Wednesday March 2, 2011. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed, File)

“This is a concerted campaign to slaughter every liberal, progressive and humanist voice in Pakistan,” said Farahnaz Ispahani, an aide to President Asif Ali Zardari. “The time has come for the federal government and provincial governments to speak out and to take a strong stand against these murderers to save the very essence of Pakistan.”

Mr. Bhatti, who was minister for religious minorities, had been given police and paramilitary guards, said Wajid Durrani, a senior police official. He said Mr. Bhatti asked his official guards not to travel with him while he stayed with his mother. His father died recently.

Aides and friends confirmed that Mr. Bhatti preferred to keep a low profile — without guards — while staying at his mother’s. Wasif Ali Khan, a friend, said Mr. Bhatti repeatedly requested a bullet-proof car but did not received one.

Mr. Bhatti was also nervous about using security guards, Mr. Khan said, because it was a bodyguard who in January killed Punjab province Gov. Salman Taseer, another opponent of the blasphemy laws. To the horror of Pakistan’s besieged liberals, many ordinary citizens praised the governor’s assassin — a sign of the spread of hard-line Islamist thought in the country.

With the death of Mr. Bhatti, Pakistani Christians lost their most prominent advocate. Christians are the largest religious minority in the country, where roughly 5 percent of 180 million people are not Muslim. They have very little political power and tend to work in lower-level jobs, such as street sweeping.

“We have been orphaned today!” wailed Rehman Masih, a Christian resident of Islamabad. “Now who will fight for our rights? Who will raise a voice for us? Who will help us?”

The assassination drew swift condemnation from Christian leaders elsewhere.

A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the slaying is a “new episode of violence of terrible gravity.” He said it “demonstrates just how justified are the the insistent statements by the pope regarding violence against Christians and religious freedom.” Rev. Lombardi noted that Pope Benedict XVI had met with Mr. Bhatti in September.

In Britain, leaders of the Anglican Church expressed shock and sorrow and urged Pakistan’s government to do more to protect Christians. The U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, also condemned the assassination, calling Mr. Bhatti “a Pakistani patriot.”

Several Muslim leaders in Pakistan either offered a tepid condemnation or claimed the assassination was part of foreign-led conspiracy to drive a wedge between Muslims and Christians.

The blasphemy laws are a deeply sensitive subject in Pakistan, where most residents are Sunni Muslims and where austere versions of Islam — more common in the Middle East than South Asia — have been on the rise.

Human rights groups have long warned that the laws are vaguely worded and open to abuse because people often use them to settle rivalries or persecute religious minorities.

But in a sign of how scared the largely secular-leaning ruling party is of Islamist street power, party leaders haven’t supported calls for reforming the laws. Instead, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and others have repeatedly insisted they won’t touch the statutes.

After the assassination of the Punjab governor, his confessed killer, bodyguard Mumtaz Qadri, was greeted with showers of rose petals from many lawyers who went to watch his initial court hearing.

Weeks afterward, another prominent opponent of the blasphemy laws, National Assembly member Sherry Rehman, dropped her bid to get them changed. The Pakistan People’s Party member said she had to abide by party leaders’ decisions. She, too, faces death threats and has been living with heavy security.

No one has been put to death for blasphemy in Pakistan because courts typically throw out cases or commute the sentences. Still, some who are released are later killed by extremists or have to go into hiding. Others accused of blasphemy spend long periods in prison while waiting for their cases to wind through the courts.

Associated Press writers Nahal Toosi in Islamabad, Ashraf Khan in Karachi, Victor L. Simpson in Rome, and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.