YUMA - The sole survivor of a Yuma County shooting spree that ended when the gunman who killed five people committed suicide has been released from a Phoenix hospital.
Linda Kay Clatone returned home to Wellton last Tuesday. Friend Kay "Kitty" Desche told the Yuma Sun that the 52-year-old is happy to be home and "doing wonderful."
About a dozen close friends welcomed her back to Wellton with a small party and cake and ice cream.
"She was ready for it. It was a good surprise for her," Desche, 70, said.
Clatone, a school bus driver, was best friends with the woman whose 73-year-old ex-husband targeted her, her friends and her divorce lawyer on June 2.
Yuma County sheriff's officials said Carey Hal Dyess killed himself after the shootings.
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Clatone was hit with seven bullets, five in the face and neck and two near the spine. She also sustained a defensive wound to her hand. Four bullets are still lodged in her body because it is too dangerous to remove them. Doctors told Clatone the bullets will become encapsulated by scar tissue and should not cause harm, Desche said.
"Unless they move around, then they'll be surgically removed," Desche said.
Otherwise, Clatone is healing nicely. "The wounds are not too bad. Her face is healing beautifully. You don't notice the ones on her neck, and you can't see the ones on her chest."
Clatone told The Associated Press in a hospital interview in mid-June that she was jarred awake by a knock on her door at 5 a.m.
Still wearing pajamas, the woman who has spent nearly 20 years driving students to and from school in the rural community of Wellton opened the door and saw a man's silhouette.
"I said, 'George?' thinking it was my friend," Clatone told the AP. "Then he shot me, and he shot me again. And he kept shooting."
After Clatone fell to the ground, Dyess left, and went on to fatally shoot four others, including ex-wife Theresa Lorraine Sigurdson, 61, and her friends, Henry Scott Finney, 76, his wife, Cindy Finney, and James P. Simpson, 75.
In Yuma, he shot and killed Sigurdson's divorce lawyer, Jerrold Shelley, who was cleaning out his office in preparation for retirement. He then drove out of town, stopped along an empty stretch of roadway, and killed himself.
In her first week home, Clatone stayed busy "taking care of her affairs" and filling out insurance forms.
She also set up her physical therapy sessions and trauma counseling.
The wound to her hand still hurts, but Clatone pushes on through the pain.
Clatone still has a feeding tube, although she can eat normally. However, doctors are waiting for her body to develop more scar tissue around the area before removing the tube. It's scheduled to be removed in a month.
She also needs a lot of dental work. The injuries damaged her mouth, so her dentures no longer work.
Clatone's voice is different because of a paralyzed vocal cord.
How does she sound?
"Wonderful - she's alive!" Desche said.
