Teen shot in the head wakes up in hospital minutes after priest reads his last rites
What happened to 19-year-old Charles Quimby over the weekend should have killed him, doctors told his mother, Lauri Quimby. According to WGME in Portland, Maine, Charlie was shot in the forehead with a BB gun on Sunday afternoon by a friend. The BB bullet made it through Charlie's cranium and wedged itself inside his brain, said doctors at the Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.
According to Quimby, after her son arrived at the hospital, they told her that Charlie was not responsive and the procedure to remove the metal BB was very risky and should be avoided.
According to the Bangor Daily News, soon after the doctor informed the mother of her son's condition, a priest gave Charlie his last rites, accompanied by a group of friends who clustered around his hospital bed.
Fascinatingly, Charlie began moving less than an hour later, Quimby told the newspaper. His recovery shocked the doctors, who said he sat up and said hello and was able to respond to commands just an hour after he was read his last rites.
“I’m telling you, it was right after the priest did his thing,” she told the newspaper. “I believe that that kind of played into it.”
Quimby said her son is a fighter who was “so freaking proud” to have graduated from high school recently. “I know my son, he’s really strong,” she told the Daily News. "It just wasn’t meant to be that he’d die. You know when you can feel it? He’s the guy that gets it done,” Lauri said of her son.
During a conversation with Central Maine on Tuesday, Charlie's father, Jade Goodridge, said that the BB is expected to cause permanent brain damage. According to him, X-rays showed “a perfectly round object” lodged in his son’s brain and doctors believe it to be from a BB gun and not a pellet gun.
“It could affect his eyes and movement," Goodridge told Central Maine. “He’s doing a little better. He’s going to make it; so far everything is good.”
Although Goodridge didn't "really know the facts of how it all went down,” he said that he's been told the shooting was just an accident. However, he has maintained a positive outlook on his son's condition.
Daily News further reported that Charlie was flown by a LifeFlight helicopter to Bangor after being shot in Skowhegan.
That being said, law enforcement in Skowhegan is working with state police to determine if charges are warranted after a full-scale investigation into what led to the shooting, authorities told WGME. As of now, the BB gun has been collected as evidence.
According to local media reports, the shooter has been identified as 20-year-old William McCarty. Currently, no charges have been filed against him.
After allegedly shooting Charlie on Sunday afternoon, McCarty dialed 911, according to the Daily News. "I'm not sure why anyone would point a pellet gun at another individual, playing or not,” said Skowhegan chief of police David Bucknam. “It's just common sense wise, it just doesn't make sense but there's always a reason and it's our job to find out what that reason is, and when we do we'll assess it at that point."
On Monday afternoon, medical authorities took Charlie off ventilator support. Quimby said he has been breathing on his own since.
Having said that, Charlie's road to recovery is going to be long. As the doctors wait for the swelling in his brain to subside, they are yet to find out the extent of his injuries.
There have been several reported cases of people waking up alive after being pronounced dead, either in their hospital beds or in their funeral coffins.
Back in October 2017, a young Peruvian man appeared to be breathing at his own funeral. The family spoke of their distress after he was pronounced dead following a root canal operation but appeared to have come back to life during the last rites. The man in question, Watson Franklin Mandujano Doroteo from Tingo María, a city in Peru, was inside his open casket when some relatives believed his chest was rising and falling like he was alive and breathing.
Earlier, on October 21, doctors had pronounced Doroteo dead after experiencing severe chills and fever post a root canal procedure. However, rather shockingly, relatives present at the wake immediately called paramedics when they noticed apparent signs of life. Upon the doctor's arrival at the funeral, he checked out Doroteo and confirmed he was showing vital signs, according to Argentine newspaper Los Andes.
Doroteo was subsequently removed from the coffin and rushed to a nearby hospital. But to the dismay of his family and well-wishers, he was confirmed dead upon arrival. According to the young Peruvian's relatives, Doroteo may have been alive all along after being sedated from the drugs administered to his body for the dental operation.