MINNEAPOLIS (NewsNation) — The mother and nurse of a 9-year-old girl wounded in a shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school urged lawmakers to ban semi-automatic rifles or explain to her daughter “why a semi-automatic rifle is more valuable than her life.”
Malia Kimbrell, whose daughter Vivian St. Clair was shot multiple times in the back and arm during the Aug. 27 attack at Annunciation Catholic School, spoke from Hennepin Healthcare, where she works as a nurse and where her daughter was treated. The shooting left two children dead and 21 people injured.
“I got to take my child home after this horrific massacre. But the Moyskis didn’t. And the Merkels didn’t,” Kimbrell said, referring to the families of the two children killed. “We all dropped our kids off that morning, but we didn’t all get to take our kids home.”
Vivian, who ran from the church to the school gym after being shot, has bullet fragments that will likely remain in her body for life, according to her mother. The girl is receiving IV antibiotics and fluids and asking questions “no 9-year-old should ever have to ask” about why the shooting happened.
Kimbrell praised the heroic response of teachers, first responders and medical staff but warned that “without action, we will be here again, mourning the loss of innocent lives.”
“Those bullets firing through the stained glass windows didn’t care whose parents were Democrats or Republicans,” she said. “The bullets didn’t care what color hair those kids had or what color their skin was.”
She called for improved mental health support and background check measures but said she would “settle for nothing less than immediate ban on semi-automatic rifles and high capacity magazines.”
Kimbrell challenged lawmakers who oppose gun restrictions to “come to my living room” and watch her daughter’s nightly wound care, telling them to “look her in the eye while you cleanse her bullet wounds.”
The mother concluded by asking people to pray for another wounded student, Sophia, and to keep alive the memory of the two children killed: “Please, please keep Fletcher and Harper’s memory alive.”
Another student, Sophia Forchas, is undergoing crucial medical treatment, her family told the Star Tribune. The 12-year-old, like Vivian St. Clair, was shot at the church.
Forchas is at the same hospital where her mother, Amy Forchas, is the head of the pediatric ICU at Hennepin Healthcare.
A GoFundMe to help pay for Vivian’s medical expenses had raised more than $160,000 by Thursday afternoon.
Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said he plans to call a special legislative session to consider tougher gun laws after the shooting at Annunciation Church.
Walz told reporters Tuesday, after welcoming children back to a public school in the Minneapolis suburb of Eagan, that he’ll be making calls to lawmakers and working on a plan over the next couple of days. Walz said he intends to propose a “very comprehensive” package that could include an assault-weapons ban.
But it’s not clear if new restrictions on guns could pass the closely divided Minnesota legislature. A special election this month is expected to restore a 67-67 tie in the House under a Republican speaker, and Senate Democrats have just a one-vote majority.