At last, homecoming for Santa Fe shooting survivor
SANTE FE — The 16-year-old in blue striped pajamas and stylish black-framed glasses giggled with her two best friends, who talked about school dress code (no holes in jeans or off-the-shoulder shirts), gleefully checked friend requests, and marveled over Justin Timberlake’s height (he’s tall).
Sarah Salazar didn’t say much on Wednesday afternoon. It still hurts to talk. It hurts to move. It hurts to stay still and let her mind wander back to the morning of May 18.
To first period art class at Santa Fe High School and the sight of the boy in a trench coat who burst into the room and began shooting. To the chaos as Sarah, then in 10th grade, somehow made it to the supply closet, even as the shooter fired into the door. Two of her classmates died next to her.
Sarah, her left shoulder and jaw shattered, bleeding from an injury to the veins in her neck, passed out. Another student, Trenton Beazley, himself shot, tied a jacket around her to stem the blood loss, likely saving her life.
When paramedics reached her, they thought the young girl was dead.
It would take hours for her frantic mother, Sonia Lopez, to find out that her second oldest daughter — one of five — had survived and was in surgery at Clear Lake Regional Medical Center. Eight students and two teachers were killed that day; 13 others — including Sarah — were wounded.
Late Monday night, after more than two weeks in the hospital, after surgeries to repair her jaw, after enduring physical therapy that left her sobbing, after visits from Houston Texans defensive end J.J. Watt and pop star Justin Timberlake, Sarah was released from the hospital.