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Through excruciating pain, Erik Chappell called 911 and told the dispatcher: "My car blew up with two kids."

Chappell and his sons, 11 and 13, were the victims of a car bombing on Tuesday. Chappell's Volvo exploded as he drove the boys to football practice in Monroe, Mich.

"I've got two significant leg injuries...they're chewed up pretty good," he told the 911 dispatcher. "Deep tissue wounds. They are bleeding. I need someone here now."

Chappell and his sons are expected to survive the attack.

The sons' principal posted a statement on the school website saying that she had spoken with Chapell's wife, and that her husband and sons were doing well and recovering.

"They are all in stable conditions and are in good spirits," Michelle Sontag wrote. "All are expected to have a full recovery. I have spoken with Mrs. Chappell twice today, and she has kept me abreast of their improving conditions."

Sontag said that the family is asking for prayers for healing and comfort.

Authorities believe the bombing was a criminal attack and not terrorism. Police say whoever planted the bomb placed it in such a way that it would inflict as much damage as possible.

"They were very, very blessed not to have been killed. They're seriously injured, but they're still alive and that means everything," said Donald Dawkins, spokesman for Michigan's Bureau of Alcohol,Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Erik Chappell

Chappell, 42, is a lawyer who primarily handles business litigation in Ohio and Michigan. He also practices family law and is known to handle messy divorce cases.

When the car erupted into a fireball, burning down to just its metal frame, several panicked witnesses called 911.

"By the time I got there, the car was completely engulfed," said witness Edwin Holly. "The one boy said, oh daddy, my foot keeps hurting... well, he couldn't understand, I don't think. I think he was probably still in shock or whatever."

Somehow Chappell was able to pull his boys out of the car. Police are still searching for who is responsible for planting the car bomb.

The ATF is offering a $10,000 reward for information that could lead to the suspect's capture.

"They're going to be looking at this most likely as a targeted attack. They're going to look at his personal and professional life…who his former clients are, who his current clients are, what are his most controversial cases," said ABC News' legal analyst Dan Abrams.

Abrams said that one big asset in the investigation is Chappell himself. Since he was lucky enough to survive the attack, he'll be able to aid investigators.

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Troy Davis was executed this evening for the murder of an off-duty policeman after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a last-minute stay of execution amid widespread public doubts about his guilt.

Davis, 42, died at 11:08 p.m. ET, according to a Georgia Department of Corrections official. His death by lethal injection came after an approximately four-hour delay for legal review.

Eyewitnesses described the mood in the execution chamber as "somber" as Davis was wheeled in strapped to a gurney. He declared his innocence a final time in the 1989 murder as witnesses and relatives of the victim -- off-duty Savannah, Ga., policeman Mark MacPhail -- looked on.

"I'd like to address the MacPhail family," Davis said, according to The Associated Press. "Let you know, despite the situation you are in, I'm not the one who personally killed your son, your father, your brother. I am innocent.

"The incident that happened that night is not my fault," he added. "I did not have a gun. All I can ask ... is that you look deeper into this case so that you really can finally see the truth.

"I ask my family and friends to continue to fight this fight," he said. "For those about to take my life, God have mercy on your souls. And may God bless your souls."

Witnesses said Davis' eyes fluttered as he received his first injection and lost consciousness, and that the entire process of lethal injection lasted about 15 minutes.

"Justice has been served for Officer Mark MacPhail and his family," state Attorney General Sam Olens said in a statement.

Joan MacPhail-Harris, the widow of Mark MacPhail, told The Associated Press that "it's a time for healing" now that Davis' execution has occurred, that she saw "nothing to rejoice" over in Davis' death and that she was praying for his family.

"I will grieve for the Davis family because now they're going to understand our pain and our hurt," she told the AP in a telephone interview from Jackson.

"I'm kind of numb. I can't believe that it's really happened," MacPhail's mother, Anneliese MacPhail, told the AP in a telephone interview from her home in Columbus, Ga. "All the feelings of relief and peace I've been waiting for all these years, they will come later. I certainly do want some peace."

Members of the MacPhail family are convinced Davis was guilty, but many other observers are not.

Davis had his execution stayed four times over the course of his 22 years on death row, but multiple legal appeals during that time failed to prove his innocence.

Public support grew for Davis based on the recanted testimony of seven witnesses from his trial and the possible confession of another suspect, which his defense team claimed cast too much doubt on Davis' guilt to follow through with an execution.

A growing tide of celebrities, politicians and social media users called for the execution to be delayed because of "too much doubt" present in his case.

Up to and beyond the moments of execution, the criticism continued. "Strange Fruit," a classic song about lynching, trended on Twitter, celebrities tweeted their disapproval and, after it was over, an Amnesty International official released a written statement condemning the execution.

"Killing a man under this enormous cloud of doubt is horrific and amounts to a catastrophic failure of the justice system," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International AIUSA. "Our hearts are heavy, but we have not lost our spirit of defiance. Millions of people around the world now know of Troy Davis and see the fallibility of the U.S. justice system."

The execution was delayed more than four hours as the U.S. Supreme Court weighed last-minute arguments from Davis' legal team and the state of Georgia over whether his execution should be blocked.

The court's decision to deny the stay came without comment after 10 p.m. ET.

Troy Davis Backers in Frantic Last Minute Efforts to Stop Execution

At 7:05 p.m. ET, five minutes after his scheduled death, Davis' supporters erupted in cheers, hugs and tears outside the jail in Jackson, Ga., as supporters believed Davis had been saved from the death penalty. But Davis was granted only a temporary reprieve as the Supreme Court considered the decision.

At a protest in front of the White House today, at least 12 Howard University students were arrested for failing to move off the White House sidewalk, according to ABC News affiliate WJLA. The protest there was expected to last until 7 p.m.

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External links are provided for reference purposes. ABC News is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites. Copyright © 2011 ABC News Internet Ventures.

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External links are provided for reference purposes. ABC News is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites. Copyright © 2011 ABC News Internet Ventures.

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Take a look at your Facebook page today, if you’re a user, and let us know if you laughed or smashed your screen. Facebook has changed its look, adding a “top story” listing of the newest postings by your online friends, and the reaction is … well, mixed.

“Starting today, it will be easier to keep up with the people in your life no matter how frequently or infrequently you’re on Facebook,” wrote Mark Tonkelowitz, an engineering manager at Facebook, in a post on the company’s blog.

The idea, Facebook says, is that if you’ve been away from the site for a few days, you won’t be in danger of missing the most important posts friends put up. Though Facebook isn’t offering many details on how its software will figure out which posts are most likely to be of interest to you, and keep them up at the top of the page.

“We use a variety of things to decide whether a story might be interesting or important,” said a Facebook spokesperson in an email. “For example, this may include changes about your employer, school, relationship status or city, as well as things like the number of likes or comments on a post. For example, if a friend’s posts get dozens of comments or likes, it’s likely to be a top story.”

“News Feed will act more like your own personal newspaper,” said Tonkelowitz. “You won’t have to worry about missing important stuff. All your news will be in a single stream with the most interesting stories featured at the top.”

There are other changes:

New posts that went up since you last logged on are marked with small blue triangles in the upper left, as if you had folded down the corner.There’s a moving “ticker” along the right margin: “See what your friends are up to right now.”Photos are larger.

Do you like what you see? On Facebook’s blog this morning, people were voting against the changes by a two-to-one margin. One annoyed comment: “Quite frankly I don’t want Facebook deciding who is most important in my life. I want my news feed to just go chronologically and if I want to hide posts from someone, I will. Stop changing.”

The “top story” on my own page was a one-liner from an old college friend: “Packing my FB bags and headed for Google+. This sucks.”

Actually, it will now be easier for him to do that. Google+, the social-networking service Google launched over the summer, is now open to anyone who wants to join. In its start-up phase, one could only join if invited by someone who already belonged. The strategy worked: in its first month Google+ claimed 20 million members.

Google “created a bit of a feeding frenzy that I think surprised a lot of us,” said Rob Enderle, a California-based technology analyst. “In a way they used social engineering to create initial demand and that was new to them.”

It’s natural for people to react negatively when there’s a change made to something with which they were comfortable; think how you react when a friend shows up with new glasses. In the meantime, Facebook will have to put up with comments like this:

“Facebook, you’re not near as smart as you think you are,” wrote a user from Texas. “Your algorithms for deciding what I want to see, who I want to talk to or what I think is important are 99.999% of the time the exact polar opposite of what I want.”

A staffer here at Nightline suggested adding the informal ballot below. Please feel free to click on it, or add a comment at bottom.

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