Miracle Man’s drilling escape

RON Hunt’s friends and family have been calling him the Miracle Man ever since an 18-inch-long drill bit bored through his eye and out the back of his skull.

"It didn't seem possible for him to be alive, seeing him with a drill bit through his head," his nephew Ben Hunt said.

The construction worker from Truckee, California, lost an eye but survived the freak accident without any brain damage after falling from a ladder and onto the drill. Doctors said the drill bit pushed his brain aside rather than pushing into it, which likely would have caused serious brain damage or death. While drilling above his head on August 15, the six-foot ladder Ron Hunt was standing on started to wobble so he tossed the drill aside as construction workers are trained to do. He then fell off the ladder face first and onto the drill.

"By the time I was falling, and I let the drill go down, I was already on top of it," Ron Hunt said yesterday.

"I ran my hands up the drill bit, up to my eye, and felt it coming through the back of my head," he said.

"That's where pretty much the shock set in."