A benefit fundraiser for shooting victim Kasey DePriest will be held on Saturday, Oct. 19 in Seaman. (Provided photo)

By Austin Rust-

A benefit fundraiser will be held Oct. 19 in Seaman for Kasey DePriest, the 29 year-old clerk who was a victim in the Seaman Marathon shooting on Sept. 27. All proceeds will go to Kasey and her family for current and future medical expenses. After nearly two weeks in the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, Kasey returned home Oct. 8, where she continues to recover.
The benefit fundraiser in Seaman will begin Saturday at 11:30 a.m. with a performance by Hotrod and the Fastlane in the Seaman Marathon station parking lot, where registration for a motorcycle benefit ride will begin at noon. The entry fee is $15 per bike. After the ride, which sets off from the station at 1 p.m., donated items will be sold in a silent auction, a short raffle will be held, and a 50-50 “split the pot” drawing will take place.
At 4:30 p.m., the Fancy Free Cloggers will perform at the Seaman Village Community Center, where a benefit dinner with food provided by the Seaman community and local Amish will begin at 5 p.m.. Donated items will be raffled off after the dinner, with all proceeds from ticket sales going to Kasey DePriest and her family. For those who can not attend the benefit, but would like to donate, a fundraiser account has been created to receive donations at the First State Bank.
There has been an outpouring of community support to help Kasey and her family through this difficult time, and it continues with this event. A GoFundMe page was created Sept. 28 – a day after the tragic incident – with the goal to raise $1,100 for Kasey. As of today, the page has been shared 741 times, and through the generosity of 43 donors, it has raised $2,160.
Kasey DePriest is a second-year student in the Medical Laboratory Technology Program at Shawnee State University. While Kasey was staying in the UC Medical Center, Andrea Zaph, an Associate Professor of the program, announced via Facebook that the SSU MLT Program would be accepting orders for t-shirts beginning Oct. 8, with all proceeds going to Kasey. Just two days later, Oct. 10, the SSU MLT Program also sold pizza on campus to benefit Kasey.
According to Karen Conn, the organizer of the benefit fundraiser to be held this Saturday in Seaman, Kasey is “getting better. She’s still sore. I mean, she’s having trouble getting up out of bed. But she’s the best she can be, after a situation like that. She’s able to get up and walk. She walks very slow, but she’s coming along. Kasey is going to try to come be with us at the benefit. She will be in a wheelchair, but she’s going to try her best to be there.”
Conn explained that to her knowledge, Kasey underwent three surgeries during her stay at the UC Medical Center. The first was to fix the damage that the bullet had caused, which included the repair of a collapsed right lung, and the rest were to stop bleeding from a main artery.
“The way I know Kasey is that she grew up with my daughter,” Conn said. “I knew when she was a little-bitty, a baby, and she and her family are my neighbors. If they need something, I’m there for them, and it’s vice-versa. It’s always been like that. They’re just like family to me.”
“This is awesome, how the community is coming along,” she continued. “That’s one thing that I wanted this to be: it’s all of the community coming together to support Kasey, and also, it’s all of us supporting each other, because everybody knew Kasey, since she worked there at the gas station. It’s something good, to support her and pull us together. When something like this happens, we got each other.”