Man shoots himself in the face...with a nailgun

A man has survived after accidentally shooting himself in the face with a nail gun. Californian builder Victor Benavidez, 28, had an 8cm nail lodged just 1mm from his brain after the tool discharged when he was fixing a roof, The Sun reports.

Benavidez said: "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'. It didn't hurt at all but I knew something was wrong. Then I felt something with my tongue."

He added: "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 lucky to be alive."

Dr Kimberly Lee, a reconstructive surgeon at Cedars-Sinai hospital, said: "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.

"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."


/Digital Spy/