On Tuesday, a police officer responding to a call about an emotionally disturbed man was stabbed in the head by the man. The knife, with a 3.5" blade, penetrated Officer Eder Loor's skull and his brain. Yesterday, Loor's neurosurgeon described him as "probably the luckiest unlucky man you could ever have."
Officer Loor
According to Dr. Joshua B. Bederson, the knife went into Loor's temporal lobe. The Daily News reports, "If his middle cerebral artery was sliced open — and the knife just nicked it — the officer would have bled to death. The blade stopped just an inch from a section of the temporal lobe that controls speech, and another half-inch from the area that handles motor function. Doctors removed a blood clot and cleared pressure on the brain from welling blood."
When Loor was stabbed, he took the knife out of his head. His pregnant wife Dina said, "Since he’s an EMT, he managed to hold the pressure, and somebody on the street, I believe, handed him a towel." Bederson wasn't thrilled that Loor took the knife out, "I would have preferred to see the knife still in there"—according to CityRoom, "because the blade might have been holding a lot of the damage in place, and because pulling it out performed a second slicing action." Bederson added, "Remember that famous adventurer who got stabbed in the heart by a stingray? He died because he pulled it out himself."
The suspect, Terrance Hale, 26, was charged with Attempted Aggravated Murder, Assault and Criminal Possession of a Weapon. Police Commissioner Kelly had said that when Loor and his partner arrived at a building on Third Avenue and 107th Street, Hale was in the lobby. HIs mother—who had called 911 because Hale is bipolar and wasn't taking his meds— said he needed to go the hospital and Hale said he would go to the hospital by himself. Suddenly, he pulled a knife out and stabbed Loor.
Hale's mother was angry when the Times spoke to her, claiming "she had called for an ambulance to help him, and not for the police. She also accused the police of mishandling the situation and displaying a lack of training for a sensitive domestic encounter, and said she planned to contact a lawyer. 'They did not get backup, and they did not do their job right,' Ms. Hale, 51, said. 'My son was not feeling well; he was sick and said he wanted to go to the hospital.'"
