TUCSON, Ariz. – Four days after being shot in the head, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was making small movements on her own, tugging at her hospital gown and touching her wounds, one of her doctors said Wednesday.
Giffords remained in critical condition at Tucson’s University Medical Center after she was struck once in the head Saturday. Authorities accuse Jared Loughner, 22, of opening fire on a crowd at an event she was holding. Nineteen people were shot and six died.
The three-term Democrat was expected to live and has been making progress. Giffords is more alert after nurses eased her sedation. She can breathe on her own, respond to voice commands and even make small spontaneous motions.
“She was able to actually even feel her wounds herself,” said trauma surgeon Dr. Peter Rhee, adding she had also pulled at her gown.
Rhee declined to elaborate about her latest progress.
Giffords’ husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, has remained by her bedside. Kelly is supposed to command shuttle Endeavour’s final mission in April, but NASA has refused to discuss his flight status.
Though Giffords hasn’t suffered any setbacks in her recovery, her long-term outlook remains unclear.
Rhee said he expected some permanent damage to occur from the bullet passing through the left side of her brain.
“Will she be functional, viable, normal? I can’t say for sure, but I’m very hopeful she will be,” he said.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama flew to Arizona Wednesday to pay tribute to the six people killed in the weekend shootings and to the fighting spirit of Giffords, the target of the first assassination attempt on a member of Congress in decades.
Searching for the right tone, Obama sought to console the country, not dissect its politics.
Obama and his wife, Michelle, headed for a nighttime service in Tucson with a bipartisan delegation aboard Air Force One in a sign of solidarity.
Back on Capitol Hill, Giffords’ House colleagues praised her and the other shooting victims and insisted that violence would not silence democracy.
“We will have the last word,” declared new House Speaker John Boehner. He fought back tears as he described Giffords’ battle to recover from Saturday’s gunshot wound to her head.
Obama was again playing the role of national consoler that comes to all presidents and, in rare times, helps define them.
In Tucson, where thousands gathered for a public service at the University of Arizona’s basketball arena, Obama and his wife, Michelle, were visiting privately at University Medical Center with Giffords and other victims of the weekend shootings that killed six people and wounded 13. He was then meeting with family members of those killed before speaking at a nighttime memorial service in Tucson.
His main mission was to give a warm and honorable portrait of the six people who were killed at Giffords’ community outreach gathering Saturday.