HARRISBURG, Pa. – One victim depends entirely on her family for care and is fed through a tube. Another survivor just endured surgery to repair a damaged shoulder and arm. A third suffers lasting vision problems.
The girls who lived through the Amish schoolhouse shootings a year ago still face daunting challenges, but the Nickel Mines Amish community said Wednesday the children have made miraculous progress given the severity of their wounds.
In the most detailed statement yet on how the Amish have fared since the shootings that left five girls dead and five others injured, a committee overseeing donations said the community’s strength has helped the families cope but that the approaching one-year anniversary of the massacre has also sharpened their pain.
"To the casual observer ‘life goes on’ in Nickel Mines, with its daily and seasonal demands of work, school, births, family and church," the Nickel Mines Accountability Committee said in a four-page statement, "but for the families each day brings with it the pain, grief and questions that remind them of their loss."
The most severely injured survivor, 7-year-old Rosanna King, is unable to talk, is confined to a reclining wheelchair and must be fed by a tube but has shown slow and steady progress in the year since the attack.
A second girl injured in the attack, Sarah Ann Stoltzfus, 9, still suffers vision problems from a head wound, her family reported.
Four weeks after she was shot, Sarah Ann began talking again. She returned to class Dec. 27.
A third severely injured victim, Barbie Fisher, 12, recently underwent reconstructive surgery to improve her right shoulder and arm.