Missouri teenager Kaylee Gain has “improved considerably” since her head was repeatedly slammed into the ground during a vicious school beatdown — but is still missing part of her skull and will need to undergo additional surgeries to have it reattached, her family said Wednesday.
The 16-year-old is finally back at home following a months-long hospital stay and another two weeks at an in-patient rehab facility but still has “a long road ahead” in her recovery, according to an update released by her family’s attorneys.
“While hospitalized, Kaylee underwent a craniectomy which is a neurosurgical procedure that involved removing a portion of Kaylee’s skull in order to relieve the pressure on her brain,” lawyer Bryan Kaemmerer wrote.
“The portion of Kaylee’s skull that was removed still has not been put back in place.”
Gain, who is still experiencing short-term memory loss, has been wearing a custom-made helmet to protect her brain.
Her current recovery involves attending physical and speech therapy three days a week and will have to be hospitalized again to have the piece of her skull reattached.
She still deals with “trauma, fear and pain that have arisen from this incident,” Kaemmerer said.
Gain will undergo extensive neuropsychological testing later this summer to determine the long-term impact of her injuries on her cognitive function.
The update comes one day before the 15-year-old suspect arrested for the violent attack is scheduled to appear in court for a certification hearing, after which a judge will decide if she will be tried as an adult, Fox 2 reported.
Gain, due to her condition, will not attend the hearing tomorrow, but her mother, father, stepmother and attorney will be present.
“The family will respect the ruling, regardless of the outcome,” the lawyer said.
Gain was left in a coma after she and another girl got into a caught-on-camera fight near their St. Louis, Missouri high school on March 8.
The footage of the altercation showed the second girl getting on top of Kaylee and slamming her skull into the pavement several times while stunned peers watched.
Gain awoke from her coma several days later but had no recollection of the fight.
Her attacker’s family claimed that the juvenile suspect had been acting in self-defense and that they received numerous racial threats after the incident.
