NEW YORK, April 19 (UPI) -- A stab to the temple could have left a New York police officer blind, mute, paralyzed or even dead, but doctors say he will make a full recovery.
Officer Eder Loor emerged from surgery Wednesday for an injury caused by a three-inch blade rammed into the left side of his head.
Loor was stabbed during a confrontation with a bi-polar ex-convict in Harlem Tuesday, police said. While he and another officer attempted to escort Terrence Hale, 26, to a hospital, Hale allegedly swung around and delivered the blow.
The New York Daily News reported the knife just barely nicked Loor's middle cerebral artery. Doctors say if it had punctured it, he would have bled to death.
Doctors say the blade stopped an inch shy of his temporal lobe, which controls speech, and an inch and a half short of the part that controls motor function.
Dr. Benderson, head of neurosurgery at Mount Sinai, rushed from a conference in Florida to the hospital to see to Loor. By the time he arrived, Loor had already pulled out the knife himself.
"It was a millimeter from everything, it was ridiculous," Benderson said.
Benderson told The New York Times aside from a period of facial numbness and lethargy, Loor is expected to make a full recovery.
"If you want to call that a miracle, I guess you're justified in calling that a miracle," Benderson said.
