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Teen Recalls Being Shot Through Head With 3 Foot Spear

By ANTHONY BARTKEWICZ / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Credit: JACKSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

These X-rays provide a glimpse of some amazing incidents perhaps better left to the imagination ... 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.

August 21, 2012 Updated Aug 21, 2012 at 3:35 PM PDT

Yasser Lopez knew he could have died June 7, at the age of 16. “I was almost dead in these waters, for a simple fishing trip,” he told NBC’s “Today.”

Lopez was fishing with friends at a Miami lake when the gas-powered spear gun they had brought along accidentally went off, firing a three-foot-spear through the teen's skull.

“I remember holding a fish my friend had caught, and then falling into the water,” he recalled. “Then just seeing the spear in my head.”
He was conscious as a friend frantically called 911, and as paramedics rushed him to the hospital.

"I remember being in the ambulance, when they picked me up, I was telling them to take the spear out,” he said. “I could feel it inside the head."

Astrid Cardoza, who happened to be near the lake at the time, comforted Lopez until help arrived, and warned him not to take the spear out because he could die.

For more on this story from the New York Daily News, CLICK HERE.

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