Chicago attack victim Natasha McShane contracts super-bug

Natasha McShane, from Armagh, who was attacked with a baseball bat in Chicago this summer may be at risk due to an infection she contracted in hospital in Northern Ireland.

The post-graduate student had been flown from the U.S. to Belfast’s Musgrave Park Hospital after having brain surgery.

McShane’s father Liam, told the Belfast Telegraph, that he now “feared the worst”.after she got the superbug He told the paper that he fears his daughter will die from this infection after surviving the vicious baseball attack over the summer.

The Belfast Health Trust released a statement saying that it has reduced health care associated infections by 30 percent in recent times and said that it is impossible to totally eradicate them.

Natasha McShane, who hails from Silverbridge, South Armagh, was interning in Chicago and working in a bar over the summer. She and her friend, Stacy Jurich, were attacked by Heriberto Viramontes (30) while his girlfriend Marcy Cruz (25) waited in the get-away van.

McShane and Jurich were both beaten with a baseball bat. Jurich recovered quickly from her injuries but McShane was beaten around the back and head and was left in a coma for weeks.

She was eventually flown back to Belfast, when she regained consciousness, to undergo a crainioplasty procedure.

When she was transferred from Chicago back to Ireland the doctors at the Rehabilitation Institute in Chicago said "no medical necessity existed to keep her in Chicago.”

McShane had begun to walk, eat and speak again but still her prognosis was not definitive. The Chicago doctors said “Her peripheral vision continues to remain impaired and her cognitive function and speech require long and intensive rehabilitative therapy. Her doctors still maintain that her final prognosis is uncertain."

Heriberto Viramontes (30) and Marcy Cruz (25) remain in custody pending their trial for attempted murder, as well as 24 other charges.