A Kansas teen survived after a knife plunged into his face accidentally while he played outdoors Thursday.
Eli Gregg, 15, was playing outside his Redfield home with other children when he said he found a large knife in the grass, reported CNN on Tuesday.
“It didn’t belong to the family. They found it, it sounds like, outside in the grass, about 10 inches long,” Dr. Koji Ebersole said in a video from the University of Kansas Health System.
When Gregg went to take the knife away from one of the younger kids, it is likely he tripped and was impaled by the knife while someone else was holding it, Ebersole said.
“It was scary … there was blood, and he had a piece of metal in his face,” Eli’s mother, Jimmy Russell, said.
Ebersole said the incident was a close call.
“It could not have had a pound more force on it and him survive that event,” Ebersole said.
“I don’t think he would have survived it,” he continued.
A 15-year-old Kansas boy got a large knife to the face, and doctors say he’s extremely lucky. https://t.co/UufQZhSjYo
— KTLA 5 Morning News (@KTLAMorningNews) June 18, 2019
Doctors told Eli Russell there was a possibility of him suffering from a stroke or loss of sight following his injury. It all depended on how the knife was removed, Russell said. (RELATED: Mass Stabbing In Japan Leaves 17 Injured, 3 Dead, Including 11-Year-Old Girl)
“If it were so much as moved, just the slightest … it could have been the end of me,” Eli Russell said, according to the New York Post.
Doctors used catheters, tiny balloons and other tools to safely dislodge the knife while monitoring vital blood vessels around the wound.
Eli didn’t suffer any injury to the brain or eyes, according to Ebersole.
“Really, he’s just got a small little cosmetic incision line, if you will, from the knife on his right cheek. You would never know that he went through all of this,” the doctor said.
“I finally get to see the rest of my family, I get to go home,” Eli Russell said.
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