Vegas shooting vic, hit in head, is out of coma & on mend
A MARYLAND WOMAN who had been in a coma since she was wounded in the worst mass shooting in modern American history flashed a thumbs-up and took her first steps, relatives said.
With the help of nurses, Tina Frost, 27, took three steps to a chair and three steps back to her hospital bed on Friday.
“She opens her left eye just a li’l and looks all around the room at us, taps her feet whenever music is playing,” Frost’s mother, Mary Watson Moreland, said in a statement posted on a fund-raising GoFundMe page.
A single bullet struck Frost (photo inset) in the forehead during gunman Stephen Paddock’s deadly Oct. 1 attack on a country music festival in Las Vegas.
Frost, one of about 45 people still hospitalized in four Las Vegas after the shooting, is responding to basic commands. She flashed a thumbs-up at her boyfriend and just recently started to breathe without the help of a ventilator, her mother wrote.
About a third of her fellow victims remain in critical condition.
“She’s obviously anxious to get her wobble back on,” Moreland added. “We are so proud of our Tina, and everyone is amazed at every single movement she makes.”
Frost lost her right eye and spent two weeks in a coma at Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center after a night out with her boyfriend became a national tragedy.
The shooting left 58 people dead. Nearly 500 were injured — trampled, hit by shrapnel or shot.
Investigators on Friday provided more details on the series of events surrounding the shooting — pushing back against criticism they changed their story.
Varying accounts of when Paddock fired his first shots from his 32nd floor Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino suite have led to questions about whether police could have done more to stop him. Investigators are still trying to figure out what led to the mass killing.
The sheriff added that the FBI is now taking on a greater role in the investigation.
Frost’s plight, meanwhile, has led to an outpouring of support. A medical supply company in Florida plans to donate skull implants needed to reconstruct her forehead and the area around her eye, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The newspaper also noted that some Las Vegas-area hospitals are promising to waive medical costs for any patient who was a victim of the shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival. The GoFundMe fund-raiser for Frost has amassed a stunning $527,980 in donations from over 8,000 people after initially setting a $50,000 goal. “The doctors have been talking about Tina’s next steps and are discussing other hospitals that will have all the specialists she’ll need during her long road to recovery,” her mother wrote.
Others remain haunted by the uncertainty of their recovery.
“My fear is that I won’t progress, you know. I want to be able to walk again. I want to be able to function normally,” Michael Caster, 41, who was paralyzed in the shooting, told the Associated Press.
A bullet passed through one of his lungs, near his heart, and either it or a bone fragment ended up in his spine. He has lost all feeling and function from the waist down. “I’m happy to be alive, that I got out of there, but I want to have a good life going forward, too,” the Palm Springs, Calif. resident said.
Caster is trying to stay positive amid the grim prospect that he may never walk again. “There’s no way of really telling, so we’ll just kind of take it day by day,” he said. “I got to stay positive, you know. Pray. Hope for the best. That’s what we’re going to do.”