US Congressman Injured in Shooting Is Moved out of Intensive Care

U.S. Representative Steve Scalise, who was shot and seriously injured in an attack on Republican lawmakers last week, is in fair condition and was moved out of the intensive care unit earlier this week, hospital officials said Saturday.

The Louisiana lawmaker, a member of the House Republican leadership, has had “continued good progress,” MedStar Washington Hospital Center said in a statement. He was transferred out of the ICU on Thursday, the hospital added.

“He remains in fair condition as he continues an extended period of healing and rehabilitation,” the statement said.

Scalise has undergone several surgeries at the hospital in the nation’s capital, where he was admitted after the June 14 attack on a sports field in nearby Virginia.

Last week, a senior doctor at the hospital said Scalise, 51, had been at the brink of death because of extensive blood loss when he arrived at the hospital by helicopter.

James Hodgkinson, 66, who shot Scalise and three other people, was killed in a shootout with police at the baseball field in Alexandria, across the Potomac River from the U.S. capital.

Scalise and other Republican congressmen were practicing at the time for an annual game between Democratic and Republican legislators that raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity.

Matt Mika, a lobbyist for Tyson Foods, was released Friday from George Washington University Hospital, where he had been treated for multiple gunshot wounds to his chest and arm, his family said in a statement.

Also injured in the shooting were a congressional aide and two U.S. Capitol Police officers.

Scalise was the most seriously injured of the four people shot by Hodgkinson, of Belleville, Illinois.

The congressman was shot only once, but the high-powered-rifle round traveled from his left hip across his pelvis and shattered when it struck bone. He also suffered damage to a number of internal organs, which doctors have declined to discuss in detail.

His congressional post as House majority whip, the third-ranking member of the Republican leadership, presumably will remain vacant during the recuperation period.

With summer congressional recesses approaching, the House of Representatives is expected to be in session for only several weeks from now until the end of September, which closes out the U.S. government’s 2017 fiscal year.
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