A Twin Cities carpenter has survived accidentally shooting himself in the heart with a nail gun.
Fifty-eight-year-old Eugene Rakow of St. Bonifacius was building a deck for a neighbor Friday when the 3.5-inch nail pierced his chest.
Rakow says he was leaning against a board with the nail gun at chest level when it "jumped" and he still had his hand on the trigger.
Rakow tells the Star Tribune he could feel it "gurgle a little, crunch a little," and "knew it wasn't good."
Rakow ran to his truck and got his wife on the phone. He was treated at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.
A hospital spokeswoman says the nail came within 2 millimeters of a coronary artery.
Rakow was given the nail as a souvenir.
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