Gabrielle Giffords' Husband Thought She Was Dead
Click to viewNot to make news outlets that jumped the shark feel too guilty, but... ouch: Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, thought she was dead two Saturdays ago after hearing such news reports following the Tucson shooting spree.
Kelly's first sit-down interview following Jared Loughner's January 8 assault aired last night on ABC, with Diane Sawyer. The hour-long special was called, "The Congresswoman and the Astronaut: An American Story of Love and Strength." Thanks for taking the title of the sitcom we've spent ten years developing, ABC News.
Kelly, the Astronaut, revealed much to Sawyer. And yes, he did hear those premature reports that his wife had died, and it was about as painful as you'd imagine:
For 20 crushing minutes, Mark Kelly thought that his wife Gabrielle Giffords had died.
On board a friend's private plane rushing him and his family to his wife's side, Kelly watched television reports erroneously declare that Giffords had lost her life in the shooting in a Safeway parking lot in Tucson, Ariz., on Saturday, Jan. 8.
"The kids ... Claudia and Claire start crying. My mother, you know ... I think she almost screamed. And I just, you know, walked into the bathroom, and you know, broke down," Kelly, an astronaut, told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview. "To hear that she died is just, it's devastating for me."
For Kelly, it was the worst moment in a nightmarish day. Calling from the plane, Kelly learned the truth from people who were with Giffords at the hospital — that his wife had not died, but she was fighting for her life.
In other Giffords news: She'll be released from the hospital on Friday and sent to a rehab institute in Houston.
