The 10-year-old boy who went viral after he revealed his friend protected him during the church shooting in Minnesota has a bullet fragment in his neck, which narrowly missed a vital artery, doctors discovered.
Fifth-grader Weston Halsne was at Mass last Wednesday in the church adjacent to the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis when the shooting broke out.
The survivor told how his friend saved him by lying on top of him. “I was like two seats away from the stained glass window,” Weston told reporters last week. “My friend, Victor, saved me though, because he laid on top of me, but he got hit.”
“I think I got, like, gunpowder on my neck,” the boy added.
Doctors later discovered a bullet fragment struck Weston’s neck, narrowly missing his carotid artery, the family said on a GoFundMe page.
“Since the interview, it has been discovered that Weston will need surgery to remove a bullet fragment that is lodged in his neck, dangerously close to his carotid artery,” Allison Hawes, Weston’s aunt, wrote on the page.
“If it [the bullet fragment] went any further, he would’ve died,” his father Grant Halsne told NBC News, adding that a doctor said it was a “miracle.”
Weston will need surgery to remove the fragment, which his family hope will happen sometime next week.
He is expected to make a full recovery, his father said, but added the shooting had naturally shaken his son up and left him scared to be alone.
“He’s scared of loud noises,” he told NBC. “The kid to his left was killed.”
Weston’s brave friend, Victor Greenawalt, is out of hospital recovering at home with his family, according to a GoFundMe page.
Weston’s interview quickly went viral as he expressed his gratitude for his friends.
“If you've been watching the news, you've seen his grief-stricken face and heard, despite his shock, Weston's account of the horrific details during the mass at Annunciation Church,” the GoFundMe page read. “And in spite of everything, this 10-year-old boy was able to express appreciation for his friends and pray for their recovery.”
Horror unfolded last Wednesday after two children aged 8 and 10 were shot dead by Robin Westman as they sat in the pews of the church. Fifteen other children aged 6 to 15 and three parishioners in their 80s were also wounded in the attack.
The young victims were later identified by their families as 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel and 10-year-old Harper Moyski.
Westman died by a self-inflicted gunshot as law enforcement rushed to the scene. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said that there was “some degree of planning” that went into the shooting.
The FBI is investigating the attack as an act of domestic terrorism and a hate crime against Catholics.
