During the notoriously firearm-happy New Year’s Eve celebrations in Naples, Italy, Darco Sangermano, a 28-year-old Turin man, was shot in the head by a stray bullet. Somehow, the bullet caused no serious damage as it went through the right side of his head behind his eye socket, and wedged into his nasal passage.
Bleeding heavily, he was taken to hospital in an ambulance shortly after midnight, but while waiting to be seen by doctors he sneezed and the bullet shot out of his right nostril.
Mr. Sangermano, a craftsman from Turin, returned to his hometown after being released from the hospital.
“The route of the bullet broke his temporal bone, near his temple, and this slowed down the bullet which grazed his eyeball without hitting it directly,” Dr. Guglielmo Ramieri told Gente magazine.
Surgeons operated on the eye, removing splinters of bone that the bullet left in its wake.
“The operation lasted several hours but he is fine,” said Mr. Sangermano’s uncle, Vito Sangermano. “The doctors agree that he will not lose the use of his eye, even if for now his sight is blurry.”
Can we please get a MythBusters episode where the brothers decide whether or not a sneezed bullet can kill a pigeon? I would watch that.
—Photo asapgbmc/Photobucket