(CNN) -- Nineteen months after she and 18 others were shot
at a political event -- six of them fatally -- former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords
returned home Sunday to her native southern Arizona, her husband said.
Giffords has spent most of the
time since the January 8, 2011, attack at medical facilities in Houston
recovering from being shot in the head at a "Congress On Your Corner" event outside a Safeway supermarket
in Tucson. She has returned to her hometown several times since that shooting,
though not permanently until now.
"Moving back to Tucson today,"
her husband Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain and astronaut, wrote Sunday on
his Twitter feed. "Gabby has been waiting for this day for a long time."
Records from the Pima County
Assessor's Office posted online indicate that Kelly and Giffords bought a
10-room, single family residence in June in central Tucson. The couple paid
$1.495 million in cash for the property, which sold for half that price in
November 2007, the records show.
Then in her third term, Giffords
stepped down from her position in Congress in January 2012 to focus on her
recovery. Ron Barber, a Giffords aide also wounded in the attack, now holds the seat.
On Tuesday, Jared Lee Loughner pleaded guilty to 19 charges related to the
incident. That included admitting to killing federal employees U.S. District
Court Chief Judge John M. Roll and congressional aide Gabriel M. Zimmerman, as
well as Dorothy Morris, Phyllis Schneck, Dorwan Stoddard and 9-year-old
Christina Taylor Green.
Federal prosecutors said that,
under the plea deal, Loughner will be sentenced to life in prison with no
eligibility for parole -- meaning he will not get the death penalty, as might
have happened with a conviction. His sentencing is set for November 15,
prosecutors said.
The 23-year-old, whose legal
proceedings had been complicated by questions about his mental health, waived his right to seek an
insanity defense as part of his plea agreement.
Court documents released a few
days after the shooting showed that investigators found a letter from Giffords
in a safe at the house where Loughner lived with his parents, thanking him for
attending a 2007 event.
"Also recovered in the safe was
an envelope with handwriting on the envelope stating 'I planned ahead,' and 'my
assassination' and the name 'Giffords,' along with what appears to be Loughner's
signature," the affidavit stated.
Giffords worked at
PricewaterhouseCoopers and as CEO of El Campo Tire, her family's business,
before being elected to the Arizona House of Representatives in 2000. Two years
later, she became the youngest woman elected to the Arizona State Senate.
In an online video announcing
her retirement from Congress earlier this year, Giffords vowed her
public service career was not over.
"I will return, and we will work
together for Arizona and this great country," she said.
