French Alps Shooting: Victim Wakes From Coma, Speaks With Police

The seven-year-old girl injured in the French Alps shooting has been taken out of her medically induced coma, and spoke to police for the first time since the horrifying shooting that killed her parents.

Zainab al-Hilli was shot and brutally beaten during the attack, left in such a bad condition that doctors were forced to place her in a coma while her body began the healing process, reports The Mirror.

Zainab has since come out of the coma, and was even able to speak shortly with police in France, according to sources close to the investigation.

The seven-year-old girl is a key witness in the case, in which everyone but her and her four-year-old sister were killed. While her younger sister was uninjured, she has already told police she didn’t see anything, because she hid under her mother’s skirt when the shooting began. A source stated:

“They have been able to speak to her but this was just an initial meeting. They could not go into any detail and the child was very tired. It was not permitted for the discussion to go any further.”

After the initial meeting, law enforcement officers must wait for the okay from doctors in order to speak with the injured girl about the French Alps shooting, in which she will be asked about her memories of the attack.

Al Jazeera notes that Saad al-Hilli, one of the victims, was a naturalized Briton from Iraq, and worked as a mechanical design engineer with the Surrey Satellite Technology firm.

Autopsies have already shown that each victim was shot several times by the same gun, prompting French police to re-examine the scene, as well as explore possibilities that the suspect was a lone deranged killer. Police officer Benoit Vinneman stated:

“Is this the work of a crazy person? Was the family the real target? Is it possible that it was the cyclist? Only work based on complete information can help us to see things clearly.”

While they wait to speak with the French Alps shooting victim further, investigators are working to pinpoint the al-Hillis’ exact movements up to the shooting.