Kansas Teen Survives After Taking 10-Inch Knife To The Skull

A Kansas teen survived after a knife plunged into his face accidentally while playing outdoors Thursday.

Eli Gregg, 15, was playing outside of his Redfield home with other boys when he reportedly found a large knife in the grass, according to CNN.

“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 Monday video release by the University of Kansas Health System.

When Eli went to take the knife away from one of the younger kids, it is likely that he tripped and was impaled by the knife while someone else was holding it, Ebersole explained.

“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.

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Doctors reportedly told Russell that there was a possibility of Eli suffering from a stroke or loss of sight following his injury, according to the New York Post. It all depended on how the knife was removed, Russell explained.

“If it were so much as moved, just the slightest…it could have been the end of me,” Eli said, according to the Post.

Doctors used catheters, tiny balloons, and other tools to safely dislodge the knife while monitering vital blood vessels around the wound, CNN says.

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’m really happy that they were able to get it out and keep me alive,” Eli said.

“I finally get to see the rest of my family, I get to go home.”