An Arizona woman who tried to save the slain 9-year-old girl from a gunman's rage was reliving the horror from her hospital room, her husband said Tuesday.
"She's calling out ... 'Christina, Christina! let's get out of here! Let's get out of here," said Bill Hileman, whose wife, Susan, was shot three times in deadly rampage outside a Tucson supermarket.
His wife was having "flashbacks" to the shooting during moments of transition between sleep and waking, said Hileman during a news conference at Tucson's University Medical Center on Tuesday, at which the relatives of the dead and wounded joined medical staff to tell their stories.
Hileman said his wife also suffered a broken hip during Saturday's shooting. Susan Hileman had taken Christina Taylor-Green, a neighbor whom she considered a grandchild, to a political gathering to meet Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz. Christina Taylor-Green was a newly elected member of the student council at Mesa Verde Elementary School in Tucson.
Hileman's voice wavered as he struggled to describe how he told his wife that the girl had died. He said that as soon as his wife had a tube removed, allowing her to talk, she asked about the girl.
"She grabbed my hand and looked in my eyes and said, 'What about Christina?'" he said.
Christina was the youngest of six slain. Among the dead were also a federal judge and a congressional aide to Giffords.
A 22-year-old college dropout, Jared Lee Loughner, made his first court appearance on Monday on five federal charges, including the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who remained in critical condition.
Dorwin Stoddard, a 76-year-old retired construction worker, was remembered for his heroics. He died saving his wife, Mavanelle, by covering her on the ground as the gunmen shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others at a street corner congressional outreach event.
"We are just blessed that he is walking with the Lord now, but what a way to go," Mavanelle's daughter Angela Robinson said at the press conference.
This was the second love match for the retired couple — they were boyfriend and girlfriend in sixth grade. After both had 40-year marriages end in a spouse's death, they were reunited through a cousin and soon became a couple again, Robinson said.
Only after going with her husband to the emergency room did Mavanelle realize she had also been shot. She was listed in fair condition on Monday and is doing well, despite the traumatic ordeal, another daughter Penny Wilson said.
"She is doing quite well, I think," Wilson said. "She has a lot of strength."