she s a familiar face for a community leader s campaign to keep the children of louisville safe. please help us fight crimes against children. she is still the miracle baby, but she is also a great advocate for fighting crimes against children. erica, what do you want to be when you grow up? a nurse and a teacher. and why a nurse? you have to help people. erica, come here! yay! like the in yours and doctors from children s hospital, who saved her life. oh, we re so glad to see you. more than three years later, they celebrated erica s recovery with a red carpet reunion. taking it all in, surgeon thomas moriarty, proud and pleased that he could give his miracle patient a clean bill of health. no brain damage whatsoever. she s wonderful. she s perfect. she is this little flower that has grown. he left her with a good brain and that s very important. smart cookie. yeah.
that it only struck the brain s frontal lobe, which can absorb injury better, especially in the very young. less than 3 years old, the brain s ability to repair is truly remarkable. after a delicate 3 1/2 hour surgery, he was encouraged by comparative scans of erica s brain. the bullet and brain fragments in the pre-op image were gone. despite the repair, brain injuries are unpredictable and dr. moriarty urged caution. next few days in the icu would be critical. shell casing. at the crime scene, detective arnold continued to sift through clues. more leads came in to focus. a bloody footprint. three big red soda cans and two cigarette butts by the bed. the second one had an ash about an inch long. someone had left that cigarette and rushed out of there. detective arnold ordered dna testing on the cigarettes and
shot as well as an adult that was killed and we were expecting at that point for the baby to die. erica had practically flat lined as her high-speed caravan delivered her to the hospital. she was rushed into the emergency room where doctors and in yours worked frantically to stabilize her. her vital signs were barely measurable. a pediatric neurosurgeon, seen here during a recent operation, performed surgery on the gunshot wounds to erica s head. these were cat scans of her skull and brain pre-op. this one you can see part of the bullets and broken bone. the surgeon s life-saving mission was to clean the fragments from erica s head, repair the wound and preserve brain function as soon as possible. erica was lucky in one way. the angle of the bullet wasn t straight through the brain, but downward, exiting through her chin. what a blessing as opposed to the bullet going through and damaging and destroying everything. dr. moriarty was relieved
four days after she was shot, erica woke up and started talking to her family. in the icu, erica was feisty and combative. her neurosurgeon, dr. moriarty said that was a positive sign. her brain was rebooting. did you pray a lot? oh, yes. judith was the most religious one in the family. and a week after surgery, her prayers and unshakeable faith were answered. erica s condition was upgraded from critical to fair. she looked real bad but i never dwelled on she wasn t going to make it. now the family had to turn its focus to the one who did not make it, erica s mom, earon. on may 25th, 2006, a week after she was gunned down, earon s family gathered for her funeral. and the man who delivered the eulogy was none other than the officer who had raced erica to the hospital, steve kelsey, who also served as a minister in a local church.
erica s struggles from the brink of death have been blockbuster news in her hometown. and the miracle baby became the media celebrity. as the familiar face for a community leader s campaign to keep the children of louisville safe. please help us fight crimes against children. she is still the miracle baby, but she is also a great advocate for fighting crimes against children. erica, what do you want to be when you grow up? a nurse and a teacher. and why a nurse? you have to help people. erica, come here! yay! like the nurses and doctors from children s hospital, who saved her life. oh, we re so glad to see you. more than three years later, they celebrated erica s recovery with a red carpet reunion. taking it all in, surgeon thomas moriarty, proud and pleased that he could give his miracle patient a clean bill of health. no brain damage whatsoever.