way OT-Man dies from freak fishing accident

[papabear]

Man dies from freak fishing accident
BY MARC BEJA | marc.beja@newsday.com
July 30, 2008
A Roosevelt man died yesterday after a freak accident while on a fishing outing with his family last week.

Jaime Chicas, 21, was fishing off a jetty at the west end of Jones Beach on Friday when his 3-ounce lead sinker came out of the water and hit him in the face and then lodged in his brain.

"Suddenly, we saw him laying on the rocks," said Jose Gonzalez, 30, Chicas' brother-in-law. Gonzalez and his cousin, who both had been fishing with Chicas, ran over to find Chicas bleeding from his head.

"We never could have imagined this," Gonzalez said through an interpreter.



The trio had gone fishing a few times before and visited the beach often, Gonzalez said. While the sun set, Chicas kept fishing, as the others began packing their belongings. As Gonzalez and his cousin walked toward the beach, they heard Chicas make a whimpering noise behind them.

After looking at X-rays, doctors at Nassau University Medical Center, where Chicas was taken, saw that the sinker of Chicas' fishing pole had just missed his right eye and entered his head at the bridge in his nose. The momentum of the weight continued across the middle of his brain into the back left side of his head, where it stopped, neurologist Imran Wahedna said.

"There was so much force that it kept going and it lodged through the back of his head," Wahedna said of the lead sinker. "The trauma was simply too severe."

Chicas was pronounced brain-dead at 2 p.m. yesterday, from severe head trauma and herniation, Wahedna said.

Wahedna and New York Fishing Tackle Trade Association president Gene Young all said they had never seen anything similar to Chicas' injury.

"This has to be a one-in-a-billion thing," Young said.

Chicas, a native of Lolotiquillo Morazán, El Salvador, had moved in with his sister, Nohemy, 27, and Gonzalez last year.

On Sunday mornings, he played soccer at Cantiague Park in Hicksville, where five men in the same soccer league were hit by lightning on Sunday, Gonzalez said.

Chicas is also survived by his parents, Jose and Feliciana Chicas; his wife, Fatima, and his 1-year-old daughter, who live in El Salvador; and his brother, Julio Chicas, of Hempstead.

Chicas' family is trying to raise funds to send his body back to El Salvador for burial.

[Old Ironsights]

3oz @ 88fps (swag) = 22ftlbs energy.

Not at all suprising. Big Heavy Slow hunks of lead kill things.

[pharmseller]

I had a 2 ounce ball sinker hit me in the chest one time. The fish and I parted ways close to the boat. The stretch in the line combined with the flex in the rod made that sinker into a nice projectile indeed. I was bruised for a week.

Quinn

[Andrew]

Another good reason not to fish. It's too dangerous.

[steveb]

You can be here one minute and gone the next.

[TedH]

That's enough! Fishing must be banned for the greater good! It is obviously too dangerous for the common man to trusted with.

[Old Time Hunter]

Kinda dark humor, but...maybe God wants the illegals to stay home.

[cas]

I must have missed where it said he was an illegal.

[lever-4-life]

I also missed it, am I missing some info ?!

I must have missed where it said he was an illegal.

[Ysabel Kid]

I kept reading this expecting a punch line. Wow, what a way to go...