A 12-year-old girl who was shot in the head during the Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minnesota last month is making a “miraculous” recovery and is expected to transition to a rehabilitation program to start extensive therapy, her family announced Monday.
“Your prayers have been powerful. Sophia surviving this horrific attack is a miracle. Her healing progress is nothing short of miraculous,” Sophia Forchas’ family wrote in a statement.
Forchas, a seventh-grader, was among several other children and a few parishioners who were injured during the shooting on the morning of Aug. 27 that took the lives of 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel and 10-year-old Harper Moyski.
A fundraiser launched to offset Forchas’ medical expenses noted that her younger brother was inside the school during the shooting, but was not physically harmed. The young girl was sent to the intensive care unit in critical condition to undergo emergency surgery.
Neurosurgeon Dr. Walt Galicich said earlier this month that Forchas was shot in the left temporal lobe, which injured critical vessels, and that the bullet remained lodged in her brain after the shooting. Forchas had to have the left half of her skull removed during surgery to give her brain room to swell, he said.
