A Florida teen is undergoing a miraculous recovery after he was accidentally shot in the head with a spear gun.
Yasser Lopez, 16, was on a fishing trip with friends June 7 when the spear gun they had brought along accidentally went off, shooting the 3-foot-spear through the teen’s skull, according to Miami’s WSVN 7 News.
The spear miraculously missed all the major blood vessels in Lopez’s brain, doctors at Jackson Memorial Hospital told reporters during a press conference Monday.
The spear entered the boy’s head about an inch above his right eye and went straight through the skull, doctors said.
“It’s a striking injury,” Dr. George Garcia told reporters. “It’s something you don’t see every day, a patient who arrives awake and speaking with a 3-foot-spear in his head.”
Lopez was awake and talking when he arrived at Jackson Memorial Hospital with a three-foot spear protruding from his forehead, doctors said.
When the teen arrived at the hospital, medical staff used rebar cutters and vise grips from the Miami-Dade fire department to cut the shaft protruding from the boy’s head so that they could fit him inside a CT scan machine.
By interviewing the family, doctors learned that the stainless steel spear had an unscrewable tip, said Dr. Ross Bullock, a trauma neurosurgeon at Jackson Memorial. They were able to remove it before trying to extract the entire object from Lopez’s head.
It was a stroke of luck for Lopez that no one panicked and attempted to remove the spear before the teen got into surgery, since doing so could have damaged his brain, Bullock added.
“The amazing thing is that the boy is able to speak a little now,” Bullock told reporters. “He’s saying short sentences, he’s out of bed, he’s able to make his needs felt.”
The teen has no memory of the accident and may never regain those memories, the doctor said.
Bullock estimated that it may take Lopez two or three months in rehab before he can leave the hospital. “We are very upbeat about his potential for recovery,” the surgeon said.
Jackson Memorial Hospital is also where “Miami Zombie” victim Ronald Poppo is being treated after a vicious face biting attack last month.
Kill not many, my friend. Kill not many.