The condition of the last victim of the Annunciation Catholic Church shooting to remain hospitalized has improved after two weeks.
Sophia Forchas, 12, has improved from critical condition to serious condition as of Thursday morning, according to the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis. Serious condition, as defined by HCMC , means the patient is acutely ill and there is a chance for improved prognosis.
Sophia is the last of the 21 people, most of them children, who were injured in the Aug. 27 shooting to still be under hospital care. Two children — 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel and 10-year-old Harper Moyski — were killed as Annunciation Church and its affiliated school held a back-to-school Mass.
The shooter died by suicide, police said, and no motive has been publicly identified.
At a Sept. 5 briefing, Sophia’s neurosurgeon, Dr. Walt Galicich, said there was a chance she could be the third fatality in the shooting but that he was starting to see “rays of hope.”
“I noticed her blue nail polish and her curly hair, and I opened her eyes, and she was bilaterally fixed and dilated, which means that her pressure in her brain was very high,” he said. “And if you had told me at this juncture, 10 days later, that we’d be standing here with any ray of hope, I would have said it would take a miracle.”
Galicich said Sophia was shot in her left temporal lobe and the bullet remains lodged in her right occipital lobe. Important blood vessels in the bullet’s path were damaged, he said. She has swelling and pressure in the brain, and as of Sept. 5, she was in a medically induced coma with intermittent breaks.
“It’s day by day, and I can’t tell you how this is going to end. I know she’s had a stroke from that injury, that blood vessel,” Galicich said at the time. “I don’t know what her permanent deficits are going to be, but we’re a little bit more optimistic that she’s going to survive.”
Sophia’s father, Tom Forchas, also spoke at the Sept. 5 news conference. He described Sophia as “kind, brilliant and full of life.” Her family has released a verified GoFundMe, which has raised more $1 million.
“Sophia is strong. Sophia is fighting, and Sophia is going to win this fight for all of humanity,” he said.
Meanwhile, Annunciation resumed preschool this week, with students and their parents returning to the school on West 54th Street at Lyndale Avenue South, according to principal Matthew DeBoer.
A memorial service for Harper Moyski will be held Saturday at the Lake Harriet Band Shell in Minneapolis. A funeral service for Fletcher Merkel was held Sunday at Mount Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis.
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