A 12-year-old girl who suffered a bullet wound to the head in the deadly mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic school in Minneapolis in late August is back in classes with her fellow students and teachers, according to her supporters.
Lydia Kaiser’s return to school – “filled with love and lifting” – was announced in a post at an online GoFundMe campaign dedicated to raising financial support for her and her family as she tries to recover from the traumatic brain injury that she sustained during the attack.
The 30 September post said Lydia “will need ongoing care for the foreseeable future, but she remains a brave little fighter and she is feeling stronger every day”. Lydia was grappling with being unable to play volleyball and basketball but planned to be “cheering her teammates on all the way”, the post added.
“She was so happy to be with her friends and teachers and get back to learning and healing in community,” the message also said, a little more than a month after the shooting. “The shooting … was horrific. It caused so much hurt in such a short amount of time.
“But Lydia and the students, staff and families of Annunciation are committed to shining bright.”
The campaign said Lydia was shot in the head while seeking to shield a younger student whom she had been assigned to accompany when an intruder with a rifle and shotgun killed two children as well as injured 17 others at Annunciation on 27 August. The victimized students had gathered for prayer at the first Mass of their academic year.
Doctors had to surgically remove a piece of Lydia’s skull to make room for swelling in her brain as they treated her in the wake of the shooting, which was carried out by a graduate of the school who ultimately died by suicide.
Lydia’s father – Harry Kaiser, Annunciation’s gym teacher – and his wife, Leah, later met with JD Vance, and the couple reportedly urged the Trump administration to act against perennially high rates of gun violence in the US.
As of Friday, the nonpartisan group Everytown for Gun Safety counted at least 109 cases of gunfire on school grounds nationwide so far in 2025 alone, resulting in 33 deaths and 106 injuries. Meanwhile, there had been more than 325 mass shootings, defined as cases in which four or more people are wounded or killed, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
Harry Kaiser issued a letter to Vance after their meeting in which he appealed to the vice-president as a “father and a Catholic”.
“On just this one issue of gun violence, will you please promise me … that you will earnestly support the study of what is wrong with our culture, that we are the country that has the worst mass shooter problem?
“Will you please promise to pursue, despite powerful lobbies, some commonsense, bipartisan legislation as a starting point, so we can come out of our corners and find the values that we share so that this time, some progress is made?”
Harry Kaiser further wrote that “thoughts and prayers haven’t been enough”, invoking a phrase often used in the aftermath of mass shootings by public officials who are opposed to gun control.
The GoFundMe meant to assist Lydia’s family in covering medical expenses, trauma care and other costs had raised more than $412,000 as of Friday.
