A girl who had a bullet lodged in her brain after the Annunciation Catholic School shooting last month is making what her family has called a “miraculous” recovery and will this week leave an acute care ward and join an inpatient rehab programme.
Seventh grader Sophia Forchas, 12, was shot in the head when a gunman opened fire during a school-wide mass at the Annunciation Catholic Church on the morning of Aug. 27.
Two children died in the shooting on Aug. 27 — 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel and 10-year-old Harper Moyski — and 15 more children were injured, alongside three adult parishioners.
Hennepin Healthcare released a statement from Forchas’s family Monday that said: “Your prayers have been powerful. Sophia surviving this horrific attack is a miracle. Her healing progress is nothing short of miraculous.”
The statement said she “continues to make steady progress, showing promising signs of neurological recovery.” There is still a long journey ahead, including extensive ongoing therapy, it added.
Sophia’s mother is a healthcare assistant at Hennepin Healthcare, in downtown Minneapolis, and arrived at work to assist in the aftermath of the shooting without knowing that her own child was one of the wounded.
In the aftermath of the shooting Sophia’s chances of survival looked slim. A statement from her family on Sept. 12 said that initially “doctors warned us she was on the brink of death,” but said she was showing signs of progress and was able to breathe on her own.
A bullet was lodged in the “right occipital lobe” of her brain, on the left side of her head and 10 days after the shooting doctors were still wary of removing it.
Neurosurgeon Dr. Walt Galicich told a news conference on Sept. 6 that he would have to “go through the normal brain to get there” and potentially cause more damage. The pressure in her brain was high and the chances of survival low.
Surgeons performed a decompressive craniectomy, essentially removing the left half of her skull so her brain could swell.
“If you had told at this juncture that 10 days later we’d be standing here with any ray of hope I would have said ‘It would take a miracle,'” an emotional Galicich told the news conference, stressing then that it was still possible she wouldn’t survive.
A GoFundMe page raising money to cover medical expenses has already raised more than $1 million.
Her father, Tom Forchas, told the same news conference: “Sophia is kind, she is brilliant, she is full of life, she is an innocent child who was attacked while in prayer.”
Sophia’s 9-year-old brother was also in the church at the time of the shooting. “Though he was physically unharmed, the trauma of witnessing such a terrifying event — and knowing his sister was critically injured — is something no child should ever experience,” the family’s GoFundMe page said.
Emmy Beck-Aden contributed.
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