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| Wednesday,
March 5, 2008 Freak accident sends bullet into Hewitt man's head by Marlo Benning Luck was on the side of Corey Buker as a gun accidentally fired and sent a bullet towards his head last Saturday evening. "Doctors are saying his middle name is 'lucky'", said Chad Hurtig who heard this from his sister, Angie Hurtig, who is Buker's girlfriend. Buker is recovering at University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview from surgery which lasted over four hours on Sunday to remove shrapnel from his eye as a result of the gun's discharge. Initially, doctors were not as concerned with brain damage as they were with the possibility of him losing his eye. The bullet had come out clean, but the shrapnel that was about a half inch long and one to two millimeters wide which was embedded between his optic nerve and his eyeball had to be removed. It turned out that the shrapnel hadn't broken through the eye, so he won't lose his eye. The doctors think that he should retain vision in the eye, but they don't know to what degree at this time. As of Monday, March 3 he was in ICU under observation for swelling on his brain and to monitor his eye. The accident occurred last Saturday evening, March 1, when Buker was showing Hurtig's brother, Matt Colby, his new guns at his home at 808 East 4th Street in Hewitt. As Buker was returning one of them to a gun safe, a gun in its holster went off as he was leaning over the safe. The bullet went through his eye underneath the eyebrow and came out through his forehead area by his scalp line on the left side. It traveled along the side of his head and embedded in the ceiling of a spare bedroom. Colby was right there with Buker, so he called 911 and applied pressure to the wound to stop the bleeding and he wrapped his head. The ambulance took him to Tri-County Hospital in Wadena. He was airlifted to St. Cloud Hospital as soon as possible that night and early the next morning he was moved to Fairview in Minneapolis. Buker is reportedly doing well since his surgery, according to friends. Throughout the ordeal, from right after the shot fired until his surgery at Fairview, he was coherent and was speaking. marlo@inhnews.com |