The US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords The US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has released the first photographs of herself since being shot in the head in Tucson in January. Giffords posted two images showing her smiling and with her hair cropped short on her Facebook page on Sunday.
She was seriously injured in the Arizona shooting, in which six people were killed and 13 others injured on 8 January.
Since then, the only images the public has seen of her came in grainy footage taken as she boarded a plane to Florida to watch her astronaut husband, Mark Kelly, launch into space on the shuttle Endeavour on 27 April.
The Facebook pictures, which reveal no obvious scarring and only slight skin colouration on the side of her head, inspired more than 800 of her Facebook friends to post supportive messages in just two hours.
"Wow! I saw her at the very end of March, and even then, Gabby was all there, her smile, her personality. And she looks even better now," wrote Linda Lopez, an Arizona state senator.
"I think people are going to be very happy to see how great she looks. For someone who's undergone what she's endured, it's really something. I feel relieved. She looks beautiful."
Giffords has been in a Houston rehabilitation facility since two weeks after the shooting. The images were taken by the photojournalist PK Weis, on 17 May, the day before Giffords had cranioplasty, during which doctors repaired her skull, finally freeing her from a protective helmet.
Weis, who has known Giffords for more than a decade, said: "It was very inspiring to see how much she had recovered in four and a half months. I was excited to see her, and to see her smile."
In an interview with the Arizona Republic, published on Thursday, Giffords' chief of staff, Pia Carusone, said the congresswoman's limited ability to speak means she communicates mainly through facial expressions and hand gestures.
"She is borrowing upon other ways of communicating. Her words are back more and more now, but she's still using facial expressions as a way to express – pointing, gesturing," Carusone said.
"Add it all together and she's able to express the basics of what she wants or needs. But, when it comes to a bigger and more complex thought that requires words, that's where she's had the trouble."
Jared Lee Loughner, 22, has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from the shooting and has been declared incompetent to stand trial.
He will return to court on 21 September, when a judge will review again whether he understands the 49 charges against him.
Prosecutors said they hoped the trial would resume, but legal experts say it is possible that Loughner, a schizophrenic, will never be found competent and could remain in a psychiatric facility indefinitely.