Tumbler Ridge Shooting Survivor Maya Gebala No Longer in ICU

One of the students most severely injured during the February mass shooting at a B.C. high school is out of intensive care just seven weeks after her parents were told she wouldn’t survive.

Twelve-year-old Maya Gebala was transferred out of intensive care at BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver into a “recovery and rehab-focused unit” on March 30, her father David Gebala said in a recent Facebook post.

“Yesterday was a big day for us,” he said on March 31, noting that Maya’s external ventricular drain (EVD) was removed. “So far, everything is looking positive. She doesn’t seem to be in as much pain, and we’re starting to see a little more energy and color come back.”

An EVD is a temporary, lifesaving neurosurgical device used to drain excess cerebrospinal fluid or blood from the brain’s ventricles.

Maya is one of the 27 people injured during the Feb. 10 Tumbler Ridge Secondary School shooting that claimed the lives of five students and a teacher’s aide.

Police identified Jesse Van Rootselaar as the shooter shortly after the tragedy occurred. The 18-year-old killed his mother and 11-year-old half-brother in their home before taking a long gun and modified handgun to the school and opening fire. He was found dead at the scene, bringing the final death toll to nine.

Gebala said the time his daughter spent in the intensive care unit was a “whirlwind filled with both highs and lows,” but added that she’s slowly making progress.

Gebala says he was “completely overwhelmed” when Maya was finally able to sit up on the edge of her bed with the help of hospital therapists.

“This was huge for two reasons,” he wrote. The first was that she was able to use her own muscles to support herself with assistance, and the second was that he could give Maya a real hug for the first time since she was shot.

“I was finally able to wrap my arms around my daughter. Really wrap my arms around her and hold her tight,” he wrote. “I can’t even begin to put into words what that hug felt like. All I wanted in that moment was to lift her up, hold her close, and never let go.”

Maya was flown out of the small northeastern B.C. town for treatment in Vancouver after being shot three times at close range, with one bullet entering her head above her left eye, a second striking her neck, and the third grazing her cheek and earlobe.

She suffered serious brain injuries and has undergone multiple surgeries to repair the damage.

Her mother, Cia Edmonds, said doctors originally told the family the damage to Maya’s brain was “too much for her to endure, and she wouldn’t make the night.” But, the day after, the Grade 7 student was still fighting for life, and Edmonds said her daughter has done that every day since.

Edmonds shared a picture on Facebook on Feb. 11 of Maya  lying in a hospital bed with a swollen black eye, her head swathed in bandages, and connected to life support machines.

Edmonds shared another photo on April 1 of her daughter sleeping without the jumble of tubes present in the Feb. 11 photo.

The picture Gebala shared of Maya this week showed the girl alert and sitting up strapped into what appears to be a motorized chair. Her one eye is still swollen shut, but her other eye was wide open and looking straight at the camera.

New Shooting Details Emerge

Edmonds shared new details about the day of the tragedy in a March 30 Facebook post. The mom said she struggled with how to word the post, but ultimately wanted to correct the narrative about Maya’s action during the shooting.

“There’s something I would like to correct in this whole situation. That is the ‘Maya the hero’ story,” she wrote, noting that she has learned more about the actual sequence of events over time.

When the “carnage erupted” in the school, Maya was in the library with a group of students. Longtime friend and classmate Christina Walker was sitting at a computer and Maya and fellow shooting victim Abel Mwansa Jr. were standing behind her, Edmonds said.

“In mere seconds, Abel and Maya were struck and collapsed,” she wrote. “Christina managed to crawl under the computer desk they were at, and drag Maya and Abel underneath. She was trying to hide, and hide them. She held them and tried to slow the bleeding.”

Abel asked Christina to tell his parents he loved them before he succumbed to his injuries. Christina recently shared that message with Abel’s parents.

“She delivered a promise, she will likely never forget. That is a hero… a true hero,” Edmonds wrote.

Edmonds also credited another student with helping to save Maya. A friend named Abbison, who Edmonds described as “more like a brother,” yelled for police officers on the scene after the shooting to “Grab Maya, she’s still alive, her finger moved!”

“The officer on duty wasted no time, dragged Maya out of the building, into the back of his own police cruiser, and drove her to the hospital,” Edmonds wrote. “There was no time to waste. Absolute Hero.”

She described Christina, Abbison, and the officer as “forever heroes.”

“I truly believe Maya’s life was spared initially by the love of her friends, and the courage to speak out on her behalf,” she wrote. “I truly believe that, between Christina’s love, Abbison’s observation, and the officer’s ability to act critically, they are the reason Maya has even made it this far to begin with.”

Edmonds said while her daughter didn’t have the chance to do anything heroic before being gunned down in the library, Maya is “still a hero to me”

“Maya’s stubbornness and strength kept her alive through an impossible situation. Dead on arrival, she lived,” she wrote, adding that the hospital staff call Maya’s survival and progress “a true miracle.”

Edmond shared in a March 25 post that Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White had offered to foot the bill for her daughter to be treated at a “top-tier” children’s hospital in Los Angeles with “an extensive brain trauma clinic.”

She said that wasn’t an option until recently because Maya wasn’t stable enough to travel until late last month. Going to California is “tentative,” Edmonds said at the time. She has not provided any further updates about making the move to the United States for her daughter’s recovery.

But Edmonds said in her March 30 update that her daughter continues to beat the odds.

“Maya has defied every expectation in every way. Seeing, breathing, moving limbs, responding, even just being alive,” she said. “I feel strongly that her story doesn’t end here. And I’m grateful for that.”