(Sophia Wilansky in a Minnesota hospital recovering from injuries sustained during a clash between North Dakotapolice and water protectors. Photo: facebook)
Dennis Ward
APTN National News
A 21 year old who nearly lost her arm during an incident with police near Standing Rock is expected to leave a Minneapolis, Minnesota hospital soon and go back to New York City, New York.
A post from Sophia Wilansky’s father on facebook said she is looking forward to going home.
“Sophia is doing better each day and we are excited at the prospect of her going home on Saturday December 10th 2016,” her father wrote.
Wilansky was handing out water bottles to protestors on the Backwater Bridge near the Oceti Sakowin camp on November 21 who were battline police water cannons, rubber bullets, and concussion grenades.
Her father said she was hit by what’s believed to be one of the concussion grenades.
Wilansky’s injuries are named in a class action lawsuit launched against the Morton County Sheriff’s Department and other law enforcement agencies. She has undergone numerous surgeries since the Nov. 21st incident.
Morton county’s sheriff has defended police actions that night. An earlier statement from the North Dakota Highway Patrol said the injuries sustained by Wilansky “are inconsistent with any resources utilized by law enforcement and are not a direct result of any tools or weapons used by law enforcement.”
Earlier this week, Morton County Sheriff’s Department released a video to “dispel some of the misinformation on social media” about the type of “less-than-lethal defensive munitions law enforcement is trained to use for riot control.”
No clear date has been set for Wilansky’s release from hospital.
“We have doctors in NY waiting to meet with her and plan her next steps and we hope and pray that they will be able to reattach her median nerve and some tendons and get some feeling and function into her arm and hand,” her father wrote.
