Man dies in freak fishing accident

Man dies in freak fishing accident

BY MARC BEJA
9:44 PM EDT, July 29, 2008
In a freak accident, a piece of fishing equipment ended up killing a Roosevelt man Tuesday.

Jaime Chicas, 21, of Roosevelt, 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 thought it was the fishing hook, because the thread was dangling by his eye," Gonzalez said through an interpreter. "We never could have imagined this."
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 lead 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

 

More like pulled off a rock. Either way, that is something I learned pretty early that you really would rather not do. (Don't ask.) To guess, the rod was strained, so he took hold of the line and gave it a direct yank. If so, there is only one place it could go when it broke free, right in his face. Sympathy here? Not on your life.