A teenager from Portage county was accidentally shot by a friend. Now, he hopes his life changing experience can serve as a gun safety lesson to everybody.
Seventeen-year-old Larry Sanchez Jr. was admiring a gun with his 14-year-old friend on Sept. 8 when the gun accidentally fired, sending a bullet into his back.
"It ricocheted off my spine and brushed my colon and went through my small intestine and then stopped. I think they said a millimeter away and I would have died," Sanchez said.
After emergency surgery and five days in the hospital, Larry is walking but slowly. He still has numbness in his left leg.
Larry does not blame is friend for the accident.
"I guess you could say we are like brothers. I told him I was going to be all right. Soon enough we will be back in the woods again," Sanchez added.
So as this avid hunter looks forward to his next trip into the woods, he first reminds everyone to be careful with guns and follow the rules of gun safety.
"I am lucky, lucky to be alive," he said.
