Bizarre and tragic

I had no idea such a thing would be possible from a blow that isn’t hard enough to break bones:

Hunter Troxel was hunting with his father, Craig, on Monday in some woods near their home in Harpster in southern Wyandot County when the boy fired his shotgun at a deer and missed, said Wyandot County Sheriff Michael Hetzel.

[…]

The blow from the shotgun hit him at a certain time during the electrical sequence that causes the heart to beat, disrupting the nerve impulses and stopping his heart, Franklin County Coroner Brad Lewis said. His office examined the boy’s body Tuesday.

The sheriff said it was possible the boy was not holding his gun properly and that’s why it hit him where it did. “He was just a small young man, only 12 years old,” Hetzel said.

This type of death is relatively rare, and it isn’t completely clear why some blows to the chest stop the heart and others don’t, Lewis said.

“It really was a tragic, freak accident,” he said. “It’s a terrible quirk of fate that you get hit at that particular moment in time.”

Share

2 thoughts on “Bizarre and tragic

  1. I’ve never heard of it happening to a shooter, but it sometimes happens to boxers, martial artists, horse riders who’ve been thrown, and other people subject to sudden shock.

    We dont really understand how shock effects the body very well. THe heart can sometimes take ridiculous amounts of abose and recover; but at just the wrong moment, a tiny shock from a 15volt volt battery can throw it into arrythmia just as easily.

Comments are closed.