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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Jennifer Duggan in Shanghai

Chinese man impaled by iron bar in truck crash

Song Hui sits impaled in his car after it collided with a truck in Wuhan, China.
Song Hui sits impaled in his car after it collided with a truck in Wuhan, China. Photograph: Xinhua News Agency

A man in China’s central Hubei province has survived after being impaled by an iron bar when his car collided with a truck.

Six large metal bars crashed through the window of 32-year-old Song Hui’s car, with one going through his chest, according to media reports. Dramatic pictures of the accident in the city of Wuhan were carried on a number of Chinese media websites, including Xinhua, the state news agency. Another man in the back seat of the car, named as Xiao Hu, was impaled through the shoulders by two of the bars.

Song in hospital before the rod was removed.
Song in hospital before the rod was removed. Photograph: Xinhua News Agency

Photos showed Song sitting in the front seat of the car with the bars through the front windscreen. Another shot showed him lying on his side on a hospital trolley with the bar going through his chest. The final photo showed one of the medical staff in the hospital holding the metal bar after it had been removed.

It took firefighters an hour to remove Song from the car. He was sent to the cardiac surgery department in Tongji hospital.

“One centimetre and the bar would be in his heart or his aorta and we would not have been able to save him,” said Hu Min, who operated on Song. He said that while cleaning the wound, he found part of a gold necklace Song had been wearing embedded in his body.

Doctors said Song and Xiao were no longer in a critical condition.

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