The iPhone 5c may not be the Nokia 3310 (who can forget its legendary durability?), but it did save the live of a 25-year-old man when he was shot close-range with a shotgun (by a 19-year-old at that, yikes). According to the police officer handling the case, “had that phone not been in his (the victim) pocket at that time he would undoubtedly have died.”
Before the incident took place, Daniel Kennedy, a father of two, noticed that the water supply to his home was cut off. Suspecting that a group of teenagers outside the building switched off the water supply, Kennedy confronted the group and ended up chasing after his would be assailant, 19-year-old Ryan Duggan.
As Kennedy was chasing Duggan, he told the court that Duggan “spun around” before promptly shooting him with a sawn-off shotgun at a range of about five feet (approximately 1.5 metre). Fortunately, Kennedy’s iPhone 5c “took the brunt of the shot”. Although he was still seriously injured from the gunshot, he still managed to get back to his home to call for help.
Looking at the image of the iPhone 5c, it’s pretty amazing that the gunshot did not seem to penetrate the device. According to a pathologist, “if one of those pellets had (hit) his aorta and gone into a vital organ, it would have led to significant internal haemorrhaging. He would have lost too much blood and would have died before he got to (the) hospital.”
The assailant, Ryan Duggan.
Duggan has been found guilty of attempted murder and will be sentenced on 10 July. It’s rather surprising that there are so many instances of phones preventing an otherwise fatal injury.
(Source: International Business Times, Cheshire Constabulary via 9to5Mac)
