The 12-year-old girl who was attacked by her two friends in May and survived 19 stab wounds has returned to school.
“This little girl was excited to get back to school,” her spokesperson Stephen Lyons of the Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek S.C. law firm told ABC News today. “It helped put some closure on things that happened a few months ago. She was excited to start anew back at the classroom, back with her friends, and back with the school and district that the family loves.”
Before her first day of seventh grade on Tuesday, Lyons said Horning Middle School in Waukesha, Wisconsin, put the little girl’s family at ease with clear communication, starting the upcoming school year with a welcoming atmosphere in the community that has “rallied around her.”
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Lyons said the survivor, whose name ABC News is not releasing, spent her summer with her family, and receiving medical treatment as she healed. “She had a very good first day,” Lyons said.
Days before the survivor returned to school, a one-day mini-bratwurst festival was held in Madison, Wisc. in her honor. Lyons said over $70,000 was raised on August 29, to help her family with “mounting medical bills.”
“The amazing part of this story was that the world has supported this little girl and her family, even though they don’t know her name,” Lyons said. In conjunction with the “Hearts for Healing” fundraiser, a special tent at the festival allowed guests to create their own messages of encouragement for the little girl, to be hand-delivered to her family.
“That tent was busy all day long,” Lyons said.
According to Lyons, over 250 volunteers worked at the event. Roughly 15,000 brats, hotdogs and other food items were sold. In a statement the survivor’s family wrote: “The generosity of so many Wisconsin businesses, the support of so many volunteers, and the goodwill shared by so many people means so much to our entire family. Thank you all.”
On May 31, police say 12-year-olds Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser allegedly tried to kill the survivor in the woods, in hopes of becoming agents for a fictional online character named “Slender Man.”
According to authorities, the survivor crawled from the woods where she was discovered by a cyclist riding by. Upon realizing she was wounded, the cyclist called 911.
Geyser and Weier have been charged as adults with first-degree attempted murder. Geyser has been ruled incompetent to stand trial at this time and is receiving court-ordered mental health treatment.
Weier faces a probable cause hearing in Waukesha County court next month.