NEW CARLISLE, Ind. – A member of 4-H and FFA involved in a school bus crash in Indiana a month ago is making small steps toward for recovery.

While 16-year-old Lucas Bradshaw continued his fight with help from his farm family, badly injured New Prairie School Board member Rich Shail achieved his desire of being present for the high school graduation ceremony on June 1.

His wife, Nancy, said he was dropped off at the concession stand and navigated the few hundred feet to the stage on the football stadium in LaPorte County wearing a back brace and using a walker without assistance.

“He made that a goal once he got released from the hospital. I was definitely elated for him that he was able to be there,” she said.

Shail sat with other school board and staff members on the stage while Nancy Shail was in the audience with other family members there for the graduation of her great nephew, Samuel Newman.

Bradshaw, a player, and Shail, one of the coaches on the junior varsity baseball team heading to a game in Hobart, were on the same mini-bus in the May 8 crash involving another mini-bus and box truck at U.S. 20 and Fail Road north of LaPorte.

The driver of the box truck, Shawn Akison, 41, of Romeoville, Ill., was being held in the LaPorte County Jail on $15,000 bond for Level 5 felony criminal recklessness in connection with the accident.

According to the Bradshaw family’s most recent update on Lucas’ condition posted on the CaringBridge site, his brain damage was extensive enough for them to restrict his visitors at Memorial Hospital in South Bend to members of his family.

Recently, Bradshaw was removed from intensive care to begin undergoing daily physical, occupational and speech therapy, according to the family’s posts.

He returned to intensive care to recover from a May 27 cranioplasty, a procedure to repair or reconstruct damage to the skull.

After the surgery, Bradshaw was expected to be removed from intensive care again to resume his daily therapy sessions along with passive range of motion exercises a few times a day.

The family also reported Bradshaw moves his right arm, leg, toes along with his eyes and eyebrows and his left side extremities, which are a bit weaker from the trauma.

Among the other positive signs reported by his family is decreased swelling in his brain.

“If you know Lucas, you also know his strength and determination has always been one that cannot be reckoned with. The kid is tough as nails,” the family stated.

Bradshaw, who’s family crop farms and raises show pigs, is a member of 4-H in St. Joseph County and was secretary during this past school year for his school’s FFA chapter.

In addition, he was among the members of an FFA small engines team at the school that placed seventh out of 34 teams in a recent state competition.

Six other students and one other coach were injured in the crash. Except for Bradshaw, all the people admitted to hospitals have since been released.

Because of what everyone has had to endure, Nancy Shail said there were some emotional moments for her and her husband particularly at the singing of the National Anthem and the traditional playing of the Pomp and Circumstance music during the graduation march.

Rich Shail is wearing a back brace to stabilize a fractured vertebrae so it can possibly heal without having surgery. He also suffered broken ribs and other injuries.

Nancy Shail siid her husband’s neurosurgeon, following his last visit, increased the time he has to wear the brace from eight weeks to 12 weeks.

“Most importantly, now, is to keep positive for everyone to heal mentally and physically and continue to get help they might need, especially for the players,” she said.

Akison is also being held on a warrant out of St. Joseph County charging him with Level 6 felony resisting law enforcement.

Police said he failed to stop for an officer trying to pull him over for reckless driving near Indiana 2 and Timothy Road outside New Carlisle. The pursuit was terminated at the La Porte County line just minutes before the crash.