Anish Vij
A teenager who cheated death after being shot in the head with a three-foot fishing spear somehow lived to tell the tale.
Aged 16 at the time, Yasser Lopez and his friends was swimming in a lake near their home in Miami-Dade, Florida back in 2012.
The group were celebrating their last day of school.
However, after preparing the gas-powered spear gun for a fish hunt, it suddenly fired and hit Yasser two inches above the right eye and came out at the vertex at the back of his skull.
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The teen was airlifted to Ryder Trauma Center with three feet of the spear protruding from his forehead.
Medics couldn't believe he was still alive and talking.
"I could see the spear. It was bothering me on the back, like it was scratching the floor. I could feel it inside my head, so I wanted to take it out," Lopez told Today News.
Witness Astrid Cardoza, who urged Yasser not to touch the spear, said: "I just held his hand and I said you can't pull the spear out.
"And he told me 'please don't let me die' and I said 'you're not going to die'."
Surgeons used a rebar cutter and vise-gripes (locking pliers) to stabilize the spear in Lopez’s head.
"Eighteen inches of the protruding spear was removed on the outside of his forehead to allow doctors to do a complete radiographic evaluation of the patient," the hospital said.
"Luckily, the spear didn’t hit any vessels in his brain.
"Yasser was then rushed to the operating room where doctors were able to successfully remove the spear from his skull and brain. The surgery lasted approximately three hours.
"Yasser underwent physical, occupational and speech therapy at Jackson Rehabilitation Hospital for two months."
"It’s a miracle the spear missed all the main blood vessels of the brain," neurosurgeon Ross Bullock told NBC Miami.
"The most important thing is to resist that temptation to pull that thing out."
When making a very emotional reunion at the lake, Yasser broke into tears as he thanked Cardoza while hugging her from his wheelchair.
"It bothers me to come over here," he said.
"I was almost dead in these waters for a simple fishing trip."
The hospital said Yasser has since recovered and lives an independent life.
When he was last in contact with the centre, aged 21, he told them he was going to college and works at a store in Doral.