US builder survives being shot in the face by nail gun

LONDON - An American man, who is a builder, has revealed the lucky escape he had when he was shot in the face by a nail gun.

Victor Benavidez, 28, a dad-of-three, was repairing a roof when the gun went off unexpectedly and jolted in his hand, sending him flying through the air.

As he fell backwards it went off and fired a 3.25in nail straight into his face, stopping just one millimetre from his brain.

“I’m not sure what happened but as a I fell backwards the gun flipped and must have gone off again and fired a nail straight into my mouth. It was all very quick, I just heard ‘bang, bang, bang,” the Sun quoted him as saying.

“It didn’t hurt at all but I knew something was wrong. Then I felt something with my tongue,” he said.

The nail shot through the roof of the Californian’s mouth and lodged itself behind his eye socket. He couldn’t speak so he had to throw his hard hat at his brother to call for help.

“When I got to the hospital and the doctors saw the X-ray they actually thought I’d tried to kill myself by firing a nail into my head. It was a total freak accident and I’m very luck to be alive,” he added.

Doctors said if it had travelled any further it would have left him permanently brain damaged, blind or dead.

“We used a dental extractor - there are no instruments made to take out nails. There are also no lectures given at medical school on how to remove nails,” Dr Kimberly Lee, a reconstructive surgeon at Cedars-Sinai hospital in LA, said.

“We removed it in one piece along the same path as it went in. Victor is extremely lucky - he is just as healthy as he was before the accident and the hole has healed perfectly,” Lee added. (ANI)