16-year-old Florida teen Yasser Lopez is recovering from an amazing stroke of luck after a 3-foot long spear from a spear gun accidentally shot through his skull.
The teen was on a fishing trip with friends when the accident occurred on June 7.
According to doctors at Jackson Memorial Hospital, the spear shot through the boy’s head but managed to miss every single major blood vessel in his brain.
The spear entered the teens head just one inch about his right eye and then passed straight through the skull.
Dr. George Garcia told reporters:
“It’s a striking injury. It’s something you don’t see every day, a patient who arrives awake and speaking with a 3-foot-spear in his head.”
Even as he arrived at Jackson Memorial hospital Yasser Lopez was awake, aware of his surroundings and talking. Medical staff had to use rebar cutters and vise grips to cut out the protruding part of the spear so they could fit him inside a CT scan machine.
Doctors soon learned that the spear had a unscrewable tip which was removed.
After the surgery doctors said:
“The amazing thing is that the boy is able to speak a little now. He’s saying short sentences, he’s out of bed, he’s able to make his needs felt.”
Lopez says he has no recollection of the injury and it is quite possible that he will never regain those memories.
Amazingly this isn’t the first time someone has survived a spear or arrow to the head and it probably won’t be the last.
