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Woman shot in the head during Las Vegas shooting wakes up from coma and takes first steps

Tina Frost was at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas when gunman Stephen Paddock opened fire killing 58 people and injuring nearly 500

Hannah Lawrence
Sunday 15 October 2017 04:58 EDT
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A woman injured during the shooting at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas has awoken from a coma
A woman injured during the shooting at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas has awoken from a coma (GoFundMe)

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A woman shot in the head during the Las Vegas mass shooting has taken her first steps after waking up from a coma.

Tina Frost, 27, from Maryland, took six steps and breathed on her own for six hours on Friday, less than two weeks after a bullet pierced the frontal lobes of her brain and ricocheted into her right eye during the attack on 1 October, according to ABC News.

Frost was attending the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas with her boyfriend, Austin Hughes, when gunman Stephen Paddock opened fire on crowds from a room at the Mandalay Bay hotel, killing 58 people and injuring nearly 500. Hughes was unhurt in the attack.

A Go FundMe campaign to raise funds for Ms Frost’s medical bills has so far over $500,000 (£300,000).

Writing on the fundraising website, Ms Frost’s mother, Mary Watson, said: “Today has also been a big day for our TT – she is now waking up!

“She opens her left eye just a lil and looks all around the room at us, taps her feet whenever music is playing, continues to squeeze our hands, and even gives [boyfriend] Austin a thumbs up when asked.

She sometimes taps to music and also took her first steps today with the assistance of the nurses –three steps to the chair and three steps back to the bed.”

In an update posted on the page on 2 October Ms Watson said Ms Frost had had her right eye removed but had retained the sight in her left eye and though she could not breathe on her own was in a critically stable state.

Three Las Vegas hospitals announced they would help to cover the medical costs of uninsured victims of the attack.

The massacre was the worst mass shooting in recent US history. Among the 58 people killed in the October attack, the youngest was 20-year-old Quinton Robbins and the eldest was 67-year-old Patricia Mestas.

Different accounts have emerged about the timeline of Paddock’s attack and when he fired his first shots in his 32nd floor Mandalay Bay suite, leading to questions over whether police could have done more to prevent him.

The body of Paddock, who sprayed more than 1,000 bullets into the crowd during Jason Aldean’s performance, is to be sent to Stanford University for study.

Police have still not determined a motive for the attack, despite having “run a thousand leads”, according to Kevin McMahill, the under-sheriff for the Clark County Police Department.

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