...According to her family Petra Anderson, 22, a musician, lived because she had a rare genetic condition that left her with a small channel of fluid running from the front to back of her brain.

When she was shot in the face the projectile followed the exact course of the defect, avoiding vital areas and lodging in the rear of her head.

Doctors removed it after five hours of surgery.

Her sister Chloe Anderson, 25, said: "It entered right through her nose. It went all the way through her brain and to the back of her skull. It did little damage which is a mystery to many people including the doctors."

Miss Anderson, a violinist, had recently graduated from the Conservatory of Music at the University of the Pacific in California, and is due to start a master's degree in Maryland.

...She had gone to the cinema with two friends to see Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises" and was among the victims when a gunman dressed in body armour began spraying the audience with bullets.

...[Her Mother]"I believe that she was not only protected by God, but that she was actually prepared for it," she said. "God won't let the suffering or the setbacks have the last word."

Brad Strait, the family's Presbyterian pastor who was at the hospital with them, said: "Kim and I know a miracle when we see it. The doctor explained that Petra's brain has had from birth a small 'defect' in it.

"It is a tiny channel of fluid running through her skull like a tiny vein through marble. A millimetre in any direction and the channel is missed, the brain is destroyed, evil wins a round."