A young girl seriously injured in last month’s Annunciation Church and School shooting has been released from the hospital
Lydia Kaiser, 12, suffered a traumatic brain injury Aug. 27 when a deranged gunman opened fire on a church service she was attending, Minneapolis CBS affiliate WCCO-TV reported.
Two children were killed in the shooting and nearly two dozen others at the morning mass, mostly fellow students, were injured.
Kaiser had surgery to remove bullet fragments from her brain and also had a decompressive hemicraniectomy to alleviate pressure in the brain, according to WCCO.
Kaiser is facing a third brain surgery, but her family announced in a GoFundMe appeal that she has been walking and talking, and she has been released from the hospital.
The upcoming surgery “will be to replace the section of her skull that was removed to allow for swelling of her brain,” the family reported in the GoFundMe appeal. That fundraiser had brought in close to $381,000 by Tuesday evening.
The family said funds raised will be used to cover “medical expenses, ongoing care, trauma counseling, lost income, and the countless unknowns that lie ahead.”
The family requested prayers for Lydia’s recovery, as well as “for all of the students and teachers touched by this tragedy,” and for “the first responders and community members that were there to help.”
On Sunday, the Uvalde Foundation for Kids, a nonprofit formed after the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, announced that it will award Kaiser its National Student Heroism Award.
It was initially reported that Kaiser was shielding the school therapy dog, but the account on GoFundMe said she was protecting her little “buddy.”
“The actions of this young lady were nothing short of heroic,” Uvalde Foundation founder Daniel Chapin said in a news release.
“There is no question that her selflessness and dedication to her friends and peers, manifested that day into her brave action to risk her own life to protect another student from gunfire. Lydia faced the danger in a display of heroism that will not be forgotten.”
WCCO reported that only one of the children injured in the shooting, 12-year-old Sophia Forchas, remains in the hospital.
She is still in critical condition with a bullet lodged in her brain.
“There’s a chance that she may be the third fatality of this event, but the door has been opened a little bit, and there’s some rays of hope shining through,” her neurosurgeon, Dr. Walt Galicich, said.
Galicich said Friday that Forchas’s condition was “trending in the right direction.”
Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moyski, 10, were killed in the shooting.
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