Survivor thankful for her saviors
PARKLAND, Fla. — A tearful student who was wounded in the shooting rampage at a Florida high school thanked the doctors and first responders who helped her Monday and said she is making a full recovery.
Speaking at a hospital news conference, Maddy Wilford, 17, said “it’s times like these when I know that we need to stick together.”
When rescuers first found Wilford inside the school, they thought she was dead. She was pale and unresponsive, bleeding heavily from bullet wounds in her chest, abdomen and arm. A fire-rescue lieutenant was under orders to take her to a hospital 30 miles away but made what doctors called a life-saving split-second decision and took her to Broward Health North hospital, less than 10 miles from the school, that had practiced an active-shooter drill several months earlier.
Wilford has undergone three surgeries since the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland that killed 17 people. She appeared at the news conference with doctors and first responders who helped her.
“She’s very lucky, very, very lucky” said Dr. Igor Nichiporenko, medical director of trauma services at Broward Health North, adding that the large-caliber bullets “penetrated through her chest and abdomen.”
Flanked by her mother and father, Wilford said that with “all the love that’s been passed around, I definitely wouldn’t be here without it.”
Some bullet fragments remain inside her.
The 3,200-student Stoneman Douglas School reopens Wednesday.