YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Matt Cower says his girlfriend, Caroline Pizarro, was critically injured in Tuesday's explosion at the Chase Bank in downtown Youngstown.
"As she went to grab her purse, the building exploded," Cower told 3News Wednesday. "She knows that somebody came to help her, she knows that her leg was hurt, and she remembers seeing some people when she got into the ambulance."
What she doesn't remember is how she ended up on the sidewalk. Cower believes the force of the blast pushed her out of her office.
The 28-year-old Pizarro is an associate banker at Chase. Cower says she and Akil Drake were friends, Drake's body being recovered from the rubble early Wednesday morning.
Drake, 27, was eating lunch in the break room when he was killed, 15 minutes after Pizarro herself was there.
Pizarro has lacerations on her face and her leg is shattered, to go with a broken nose. She was intubated at an area hospital to give her body a chance to heal.
A single mother and native of Puerto Rico, Pizarro moved to Youngstown after Hurricane Maria. She mastered the English language to get the job at Chase assisting the Hispanic community.
Cower set up a GoFundMe for Pizarro, a woman he says gives so much to everyone and has been crying not for herself, but for six other injured co-workers and her late friend Akil.
"It's a small bank. It's well-known in the community, it's well-known in the Spanish community," Cower said. "They take care of each other. It's more of a family."
When asked how Youngstown and Pizarro can recover from such a tragedy, he answered that they would "just like we always do."
"Tough times don't always last," he declared. "Tough people do, and that's what Caroline is."
According to Cower, Pizarro has been taken off her ventilator and is expected to be in the hospital for six weeks, though she las a long road to recovery that could include physical therapy.