Gabrielle Giffords - Attempted Assassination

Attempted Assassination

On January 8, 2011, Giffords was shot in the head outside a Safeway grocery store in Casas Adobes, Arizona, a suburban area northwest of Tucson, during her first "Congress on Your Corner" gathering of the year. A man ran up to the crowd and began firing, hitting 19 people of whom six died; a 20th person was injured at the scene, but not by gunfire.

The suspect, identified as Jared Lee Loughner, was detained by bystanders until he was taken into police custody. Federal officials charged Loughner on the next day with killing federal government employees, attempting to assassinate a member of Congress, and attempting to kill federal employees.

Giffords' intern, Daniel Hernandez Jr., provided first-aid assistance to her immediately after she was wounded and is credited with saving her life. She was promptly evacuated to the University Medical Center of Tucson in critical condition, though she was still conscious and "following commands" at the time.

On the same day, doctors performed emergency surgery to extract skull fragments and a small amount of necrotic tissue from her brain. The bullet had passed through Giffords' head without crossing the midline of the brain, where the most critical injuries typically result. Part of her skull was removed to avoid further damage to the brain from pressure caused by swelling. Doctors who first treated Giffords said the bullet had entered the back of her head and exited through the front of her skull, but physicians later concluded that it had traveled in the opposite direction.

Upon receiving a call from a staffer about Giffords' injury, husband Mark E. Kelly and his daughters flew in a friend's aircraft directly from Houston to Tucson.