UNDATED (CNN/WSVN) -- A Florida teenager miraculously survives a frightening encounter with a spear-gun. Doctors at Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital worked fast to save his life. And now he's on the road to recovery.
Paramedics tenderly wheeled 16-year-old Yasser Lopez into the ER with a 3-foot spear shot straight through his skull on June 7.
Doctors say his friend shot it accidentally as they got ready to go fishing. Dr. George Garcia says, "It was about one inch above his right eye straight through. You could feel the tip under the skin on the posterior part of the skull."
Rescuers had to use a re-bar tool to cut down 18-inches of stainless steel spear to even fit in the scanner. Dr. Ross Bullock says, "The most important thing is to resist that temptation to pull the thing out."
Bullock and his trauma neurosurgery team determined the tip of the spear inside Lopez's head was actually a screw tip. Bullock says, "It was possible for us to figure out a strategy during the operation to be able to unscrew the tip of the spear, instead of having to get this whole spear dragged out through his brain."
And miraculously the three-foot shaft somehow missed every major blood vessel in the brain and pierced the right, not left side of his brain, sparing his speech.
Eleven days and only a single surgery after Yasser Lopez took a spear in his forehead; this is his brain with only a small bit of swelling. As for the day he got shot, Lopez knows nothing.
Lopez was moved out of the Intensive Care Unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital Monday.
He's still hospitalized and has another two to three months of rehabilitation ahead of him.
But doctors expect him to make a near-full recovery.