The female jogger attacked in Central Park likely will have a "100 percent recovery" and "has a zest for life that is impossible to quench," a doctor familiar with her progress said.
Prosecutors said the 29-year-old woman will be a witness in the rape and attempted murder trial of six youths indicted in the April 19 "wilding" incident that attracted national attention.Physicians say the Upper St. Clair, Pa., woman has been given full details of the crime and has a complete understanding of what happened to her. Although she has no independent recollection of the attack, her appearance on the witness stand could have a devastating effect on the jury.
The doctor, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the Wall Street investment banker is "articulate" and will "not go to pieces" when she faces her accused at-tackers, the doctor said.
In videotaped confessions by several of the youths, the woman was described as fighting for her life against her assailants. She was struck in the head with a metal pipe, a brick and punched until she was rendered unconscious and then raped.
Those statements are the subject of a pre-trial hearing that was scheduled to continue Friday at state Supreme Court in Manhattan. Defense lawyers say the statements, considered extremely damaging to their clients, were illegally obtained and should be thrown out of court.
The woman's tremendous prog-ress has now led doctors to believe she has a strong chance of recovering virtually all of her mental and physical capacities.
"We're hopeful, but not certain, of a 100 percent recovery," one of her doctors said.
She has had a "remarkable recovery" so far and is continuing to progress at a tremendous rate at Gaylord Hospital in Wallingford, Conn., where she is nearing the end of her stay, the doctor said.
When her nearly nude and battered body was found in a wooded gulley last spring, the jogger had lost 75 percent of her blood and her temperature had dropped to 80 degrees.