
Practically three months after their son was left critically injured throughout a capturing at Considerable Life Christian Faculty in Wisconsin, Christina and Brett Clardy say their son, River, is alive immediately because of hardworking medical doctors and their religion in God.
“River is a child who’s a perseverer. He’s a tough employee,” Christina Clardy mentioned in a current interview with WMTV about her 14-year-old son.
“We imagine that God is a big a part of his therapeutic by pure means like by the physique therapeutic itself and thru some issues that you recognize aren’t explainable to us. However he’s, he’s achieved higher than he ought to have,” she mentioned of her River’s restoration following the capturing that left three folks lifeless and 5 others injured.
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On Dec. 16, 2024, officers with the Madison Police Division mentioned they had been known as to Considerable Life Christian Faculty at 10:57 a.m. Central time a couple of capturing the place they found that 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow murdered a instructor, a scholar and injured a number of others, together with River, earlier than taking her personal life.
Christina Clardy, who’s a primary 12 months instructor on the faculty, mentioned her first intuition when the capturing started was to guard the kids in her class. As soon as she had issues underneath management, she turned her consideration to her personal three kids who’re additionally college students on the faculty.
“I fairly rapidly noticed my two daughters they usually had been questioning me about the place their brother was. I had not seen him, however I knew they had been additionally nonetheless clearing out the varsity,” she instructed WMTV. “It turned fairly clear that some folks had been nonetheless lacking … and one among my instructing workforce knowledgeable the police that my son was a kind of folks.”

When it was found that River had been injured, he was transported to American Household Kids’s Hospital. Upon listening to the information that his son had been wounded, Brett Clardy rushed again from Chicago whereas his spouse and daughters quicky drove to the hospital.
“I didn’t know something aside from he was on the hospital, that’s all I knew,” Brett Clardy recalled. “I wasn’t certain of his situation, his state, his stage of accidents. I used to be simply driving.”
Dr. Adam Brinkman, medical director of pediatric trauma care at UW Well being’s American Household Kids’s Hospital, instructed the native information station that River’s situation was dire.
“He had a respiration tube in. The paramedics and EMTs had been respiration for him. He had no shirt on and throughout his chest in black magic marker was his first title,” he famous.
“River was shedding a whole lot of blood from accidents to his neck, to his throat, to his hip, to his hand. His pores and skin coloration was very pale. His coronary heart price was very excessive. Blood stress was very low. All of the medical indicators that he was very near dying,” Brinkman famous.
With three accidents to his neck, together with a bullet that went by his carotid artery and one which went by the again of his throat, Brinkman counts River as maybe one of many “most critically ailing sufferers that has come to this kids’s hospital within the final 5 – 6 years.”
After a number of surgical procedures and 46 days within the hospital underneath the care of greater than 200 well being professionals, River pulled by and was in a position to go dwelling.
“He needed to relearn how you can maintain a pen, how you can swallow liquid and meals safely. Learn how to brush his enamel, brush his hair, tie his footwear,” Dr. Brinkman mentioned. “All of his nurses, techs and bodily and occupational therapists and speech therapists, case managers and social employees, physicians, residents and college students … all people was rooting for River.”
And Christina Clardy and her household are glad to have River again dwelling.
“It’s vital to present thanks for the nice in our lives. And to acknowledge […] the nice round us, like within the folks in our group,” she mentioned. “When our circumstances aren’t good, these issues, these are issues which can be good. […] I do have moments the place I’m like, I can’t imagine he’s alive, you recognize? I’m simply actually grateful.”
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