MONTFORT, Wis. (AP) - A young Wisconsin boy who was shot in the head by his mother more than two years ago has been released from a brain injury rehabilitation facility in Arkansas and is living with relatives.
Joey Slaight, 11, was released from the facility in April, the Wisconsin State Journal reported . He recently celebrated the progress in his recovery with a trip to the Great Wolf Lodge in Texas.
“It’s just incredible that he’s able to even go on a trip like this or run and laugh and have fun,” said Andra Munoz, Slaight’s aunt. “I mean, it’s really sobering when you think about the fact that we made this trip.”
Slaight now lives with Munoz, her husband Jason and their four children in Oklahoma.
Slaight has cognitive skills that are about at the first-grade level and also has vision problems, Munoz said.
“With Joey, the logic part of his brain still functions to some degree, but when it comes to safety - like strangers or things that are dangerous like hot and cold and those kind of things - he doesn’t really understand,” Munoz said. “But a lot of kids don’t understand. We’re in a pickle because it’s like, ’Is he ever going to learn?’ But you forget he’s still just a kid.”
She said she plans to enroll him in a special-education program.
Slaight’s youth has likely aided in his recovery, said UW Hospital neurosurgeon Dr. Joshua Medow.
“I think that the rehabilitation that he got and the hard work he has put in has put him leaps and bounds ahead of where most anybody thought he would be at this point,” said Medow, who was one of Slaight’s initial doctors.
Morgan Slaight shot Joey Slaight and his brother, Jaxon, in January 2015 after she returned from an emergency detention at Winnebago Mental Health Institute for threatening to kill herself, according to the Grant County Sheriff’s Office.
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Information from: Wisconsin State Journal, http://www.madison.com/wsj
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