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Nineteen-year-old Gabriel Mendigutia wanted his girlfriend to shoot him in the chest with a pellet gun, and she did. The pellet Alley Castro, 19, shot ended up going right through Mendigutia’s heart, but thanks to a rare heart anatomy he was able to survive.
The incident occurred May 23. Mendigutia had finished at least his tenth beer of the night, and was shooting his pellet gun at the empty cans in the backyard of his home in the 800 block of Southwest 135th Court. The FIU student dared Castro to shoot him. He didn’t think she’d do it. She put the gun up to his chest, closed her eyes and fired. Mendigutia was wrong. Almost dead wrong.
Mendigutia collapsed and was rushed to the Ryder Trauma Center.
Even though it was a pellet gun, the shot would have killed most people.
“The bullet caused a blockage in the left anterior descending artery, the heart’s main artery,” reports The Miami Herald. “But because of his heart’s “very rare” anatomy, blood was able to flow through the opposite side of the artery.”
Yep, besides an apparent affinity for weird dares, Mendigutia also has a weird heart that helped save him.
Mendigutia is now recovering, and Castro is unlikely to face any charges.
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