Inspiring! Paralyzed Gang Shooting Survivor Graduates Middle School

Tayloni Mazyck, a fourteen-year-old girl who was left paralyzed by a stray bullet, has graduated with honours from New Design Middle School, in Manhattan, USA.

According to NY Daily News, the New York teen was just an 11-year-old fifth grader when she was struck in the neck by a stray bullet from a gang shooting outside her family’s apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, near Brooklyn.

The bullet pierced her neck and travelled down her spine. It lodged in her back and left the young girl paralyzed, NY Daily News reports.

Mazyck’s graduation was a major milestone for her. Before the incident, she loved to dance and run tracks, so she constantly struggled with bouts of depression, anger, and severe panic attacks in its aftermath. She also started home schooling as soon as her family moved to Harlem. After some months, however, she was ready to return to school.

She made the school’s Merit Roll, and as the class student speaker, she gave a deeply touching and inspiring graduation speech.

She said, “I won today. Today I am a winner. My mishap does not define me. It does not limit me, it just helps the fighter in me stay alive.

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The young girl, who dreams of becoming a lawyer someday, will attend High School for Law, Advocacy and Community Justice in the fall, NY Daily News reports.

Photo credit: Michael Schwartz/New York Daily News