One of the 520 victims injured in Sunday’s Las Vegas massacre has lost her right eye and is in a coma in a hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU). Tina Frost, who was attending the Route 91 Harvest Festival with her boyfriend when a gunman opened fire on the crowd from his 32nd floor hotel room at Mandalay Bay, is listed as critically stable, and is currently on a ventilator.
“Tina is out of surgery and her vitals are stable,” Mary Watson Moreland, the 27-year-old woman’s mother, said, according to a GoFundMe page. “They removed her right eye, where the bullet was lodged, and there is an implant there now to keep the space open. She has sight in her left eye but will never see from the right again.”
Moreland said doctors were forced to remove a bone from her daughter’s forehead to relieve brain swelling, and that they plan to see how she responds to simulation over the next few days to assess brain damage. The GoFundMe page, which was set up on Monday, raised more than $100,000 in just 19 hours, quickly surpassing the $50,000 goal.
The Maryland native had moved to San Diego and drove to the concert with boyfriend Austin Hughes, who was uninjured. According to The Baltimore Sun, the couple was separated after Frost was taken to a nearby hospital. Once he learned that she was in surgery, Hughes kept the family updated on her status until they were able to fly to Las Vegas.
“Please pray for our oldest, Tina Frost, who is halfway through a projected 2 hour operation, for a bullet shot to the head above her right eye in Las Vegas,” Rich Frost, the woman’s father, posted to Facebook early Monday. “Her boyfriend Austin who was with her at the concert, is safe and in the hospital waiting room, providing us with updates.
A follow up post on Tuesday said Frost’s vitals and responses were good, and that she had not developed a fever.
“When they have to move her, she sits up on her own, rolls herself and pushes the nurses away,” Rich wrote. “She calms down when we say ‘easy Tina.’ Her eye is swollen shut and she is on the ventilator and still in her coma, but it is encouraging.”
Another GoFundMe page set up on behalf of Jonathan Smith described his heroic actions before he was wounded while at the concert to celebrate his brother’s birthday.
“Jonathan was shot during the Las Vegas massacre while trying to secure the safety of others,” Tiffany Jones, the man’s sister-in-law, wrote on the GoFundMe. “He was there celebrating his brother’s 43rd birthday when shots were fired. According to witnesses, he helped save dozens of lives ushering people to safety before he too was shot and wounded.”
The page, which doubled its $7,000 goal within 17 hours, was updated to include that Smith had returned home and was recovering with his three children.
In addition to 520 wounded, 59 were killed in the most deadly shooting in modern U.S. history.
