True HERO ... most would've run the other way. But I wonder what gun and caliber did the shooter use if it deflected off his face? Shouldn't anything north of .38 do more damage than this?
Unless he points to the dark spot beneath his right eye, it’s hard to see where he was shot. Somehow, the bullet that struck his face must have been deflected, he says, because they didn’t find it in his head.
It could easily have been the angle of the shot. You're assuming it was perpendicular to his head, but it could have been at an oblique angle. Or, it could have been God, as the man said. Bullets won't go where God stops them from going.
The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. James Madison
NRA Life Member Texas Firearms Coalition member
From the eye socket down there is a lot of structure that a bullet hitting would not cause a fatal wound. It's entirely possible that the hit was only glancing to begin with, or that the bullet just passed through and exited.
A friend and shipmate in the Navy, Kenyon Tuthill, was shot in the face with a shotgun, doing horrific damage, which he survived. Lots about Ken and his injury on the internet.
Another friend and shipmate in the Navy was hit by a 13mm machine gun bullet which penetrated his helmet, entered his forehead over his left eye, broke bone but did not penetrate, skidded around the inside of his scalp (and the headband of his helmet) and popped out the back at the occipital bump and fell down the collar of his flak vest. The pictures of the wound, which appeared to be through and through, were almost unbelievable, if it had been the 2010s instead of the 1960s you would have suspected photoshopping. He was back in combat within the month. He wore the bullet on his dogtag chain.
My childhood best friend's father was shot through the face on the beach at Normandy, ending his war minutes after he arrived, the bullet penetrated his right sinus cavity below and behind his right eye in front of the ear and exited almost through his left nostril. The only thing life threatening about the wound was that he fell on his back and almost drowned in his own blood before someone realized that he was actually alive and could survive and rolled him over and cleared his airway. He was left with a permanent sinus infection and a nasal drip that made sitting opposite him during dinner an adventure.
I also was privileged to meet Frank Serpico once in the mid 1980s, when I was a phone man in upstate NY and his phone needed fixing. If any recall, he was shot below his eye with a .22LR and survived.
