Teen impaled by own pliers after slipping on ice in gruesome ‘freak accident’: ‘Something I’ve never seen before’
A 15-year-old Kansas boy suffered a gruesome “freak accident” when he slipped on ice and was impaled by a pair of pliers.
Joey Zeman was shoveling snow outside his family’s home in the town of WaKeeney on Saturday when he took a spill and realized his pliers were gone, KWCH reported.
“Well, I got up and noticed my pliers weren’t in my pouch,” the teen told the outlet. “And I looked down and they were inside me.”
Gory images shared by his mother, Alicia Zeman, show the tool’s handle lodged inside his body just above the hip, with the sheath hanging by the side.
“It tried to pull them out a couple times when I first saw they were in there,” Joey told KWCH. “They didn’t come out. I called Mom and told her that I was on my way to the ER ’cause my pliers were inside me.”
Zeman thought he was joking.
“I couldn’t believe it ’cause I just thought maybe it just poked it or (there was) a little hole or something — not literally stuck in there and hanging out,” she said.
Joey went to the local hospital, where he was seen by shocked nurse practitioner Sarah Gibbs.
“(At) critical access hospitals, (you) see a lot of everything, and that is something I’ve never seen before and probably will ever see again,” Gibbs told KWCH.
“I immediately reached out to our surgical backup options to see what was available for (the) worst-case scenario being that we take it out and he has internal bleeding that needs to be controlled rapidly with surgery,” she said.
Joey was airlifted to Wesley Medical Center in Wichita.
“His Aunt Addie met him there since she was closer, and we still had a 3 hour drive!” Zeman wrote on Facebook, where she shared a X-ray image showing the plier firmly embedded in his hip bone.
“They pulled them out in the ER bay and then took him for a CT scan to make sure no major organs were affected. The physician told us that the end of the pliers were embedded in his bone and that’s why he couldn’t pull them out on his own! After a night stay, we are headed home,” she wrote.
“He will be non-weight bearing for a while until it heals! … The outcome could have been so much worse and we are extremely thankful it wasn’t,” Zeman added.
Joey is now at home on crutches but is expected to make a full recovery. He said he’ll be more careful when shoveling snow next time.
His mom also had some words of caution.
“Just don’t carry pliers on the ice,” she told him, Live Now Fox reported.
