By Police1 Staff
ONTARIO, Calif. — After almost a year of physical therapy, a California police officer who was severely wounded in the Las Vegas shooting has now returned to work, ABC7 reported.
Ontario Police officer Michael Gracia was spending Oct. 1, 2017 with his fiancée at the Route 91 Harvest festival when a gunman began to fire from a hotel room above the crowd.
Gracia was one of hundreds wounded in the frenzy that followed -- and, after being shot in the head during the massacre, narrowly avoided becoming one of the 58 who were killed.
The severity of the brain damage Gracia suffered meant months of “intensive therapy” to relearn basic motor skills such as eating, talking and drinking, his fiancée, Summer Clyburn, told ABC7.
According to ABC7, Clyburn says Gracia continues to work on regaining full speech. He will be working his department’s front counter, which he told ABC7 he hopes will help him improve faster.
But Gracia doesn’t plan to work the front counter forever.
“My ultimate goal is to get back to patrol,” he told ABC7.