Spear Piercing Yasser Lopez's Head

MIAMI (CBS4) - For the first time, South Florida is seeing some stunning images of how a 16-year-old boy was injured when a spear from a spear gun entered his head in a freak accident. Doctors from the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital and the Army Trauma Training Center revealed that it was a miracle that the spear missed all the main blood vessels in Yasser Lopez's brain. That alone may have saved the life of the teen from Southwest Miami-Dade.


The doctors displayed a montage of initial x-rays of the Lopez's head. He was transported with three feet of a spear protruding from his forehead. It took three hours of surgery to remove it. Miami-Dade Police said Lopez and a 15-year-old friend were hanging out by a lake near Southwest 51st Street and 138th Avenue on June 7th. They said Lopez's friend was loading a speargun when it accidentally deployed, hitting Lopez in the head.

"It was about one inch above the right eye," said Dr. George Garcia, an assistant professor of surgery at the Army Trauma Training Center. "You could feel the skin and the spear penetrated through the back of his skull. My initial reaction was how striking an injury this was," said Garcia. "It's not every day that someone is brought in and speaking with three feet of a spear protruding. The first obstacle was to not allow yourself to be distracted by this sort of injury. The second obstacle was keeping him still and avoiding any more damage in the brain. Then there was the challenge of how to cut part of the spear and fit the patient in the scanner."

"Initially in the hospital he tried to sit up and became very agitated," said Garcia. Garcia credited paramedics with preventing further damage to Lopez's brain by keeping him still.

Source : http://www.wtsp.com