Girl Paralyzed in Shooting Still Upbeat

PADUCAH, Ky. — Melissa Jenkins spends her days in a hospital bed, hoping against all odds she will walk again, chatting with her twin sister and reading the compassionate cards that keep coming.

Paralyzed from the chest down in a shooting rampage that killed three of her high school classmates, Missy was the most seriously injured among the five students who survived gunshot wounds. The bullet entered her left shoulder and spiraled down toward her spinal cord before exiting.

With her 16th birthday approaching on Christmas Eve, Missy appears faithfully optimistic. But her doctor says it’s unlikely she will walk again.

“She can live a normal life,” Dr. Monte Rommelman said, “but it will be from a wheelchair.”

Missy and seven other students were shot Dec. 1 at Heath High School after they ended an informal prayer gathering in the school lobby. A classmate, 14-year-old Michael Carneal, was indicted Dec. 12 as an adult on murder, attempted murder and burglary charges.

One other student, Shelley Shaberg, 14, remains hospitalized. Her family will say only that she is “fine” and recovering.

Missy’s room at Lourdes Hospital is filled with balloons, flowers, stuffed animals--including a talking bear and a croaking felt frog--and a message-of-hope poster from her church, the 32nd Street Church of Christ. She talks with her twin sister, Mandy, about friends at school and activities she’s missing.

She misses her pet cat and the family dog.

“I feel good,” Missy said. “I’m going to be determined. I’m going to keep saying I can, and I hope I will walk. I have to be happy. I’m a happy person.”

Missy got a visit from her principal, Bill Bond, who in the days after the shootings confessed to feeling that he somehow let down his community.

“He came in all upset,” Missy recalled, describing another visit by the principal days earlier. “I wasn’t. I felt fine. That’s just me. I think that’s what made him feel a lot better.”

Physicians had believed the bullet severed her spinal cord. Rommelman said recent tests show the cord itself intact, but with serious swelling and disruptions around it. Missy has no feeling or movement below her chest.

A family friend, Shawn Jones, described her as “unbelievably brave and courageous.”

“It’s incredibly difficult to come to terms with this type of devastating injury,” he said. “She hopes against hope that things will get better, and in part it is that hope that’s helping her carry through.”

But Jones said: “In fact, there is little, if any, substantial probability or possibility that Missy Jenkins will ever walk again.”

Rommelman estimated Missy’s medical care will cost $500,000 to $750,000 over her lifetime, including therapy and special equipment, such as wheelchairs and hand controls for a car.

“She can attain a life where she is completely independent, with all the daily activities that we take for granted,” Rommelman said. “But she will do those from a wheelchair.”

William Jenkins, who is retired, didn’t want to answer questions about the shooting or the family’s feelings toward the young gunman. But he alluded to his daughter’s feelings when he described her as “forgiving” and “a good Christian girl.”

Missy has said being mad isn’t going to make it any better.

Wayne Steger, whose daughter, Kayce, was killed, said his daughter also was forgiving.

“We’re going to trust mainly in the Lord and the justice system,” he told Fox News Channel. “We’re going to let them take care of this. Kayce was a very forgiving person and I have anger in my heart, but I’m not going to let it destroy me.”

Kayce’s mother, Sabrina Steger, said she was searching for some meaning in the tragedy.

“It can’t be senseless,” she said. “There’s something that’s got to come from this that’s good. I don’t think I can stand it if it’s senseless.”