A 11-year-old girl shot in the face in Northern Tasmania is expected to be discharged from the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne in the next few weeks.
Phoenix Newitt was rushed to Melbourne for emergency surgery in the hours after the shooting in August in the northern Tasmanian town of Deloraine.
She spent five days in an induced coma.
The grade five student was shot in the right side of the face as she sat in a car in Stagg Court in Deloraine with her mother, uncle, and four-year-old cousin.
The bullet broke up internally and fragments lodged in her brain, heart and lungs.
Doctors were worried there would be brain damage.
But the 11 year old is up and walking and talking.
Police investigating the shooting said Phoenix was expected to be released in the coming weeks.
But they said that any long term issues with her movement or brain function are still unknown.
Nathan Richard Campbell, 25, has been charged with grievous bodily harm.
He is the partner of a woman who was allegedly involved in a physical altercation with Phoenix Newitt's mother about an hour earlier at the Deloraine Woolworths.
A online fundraising page for the little girl has raised almost $2,000 of its $20,000 aim.
