Last updated April 12, 2019
A cell phone became an unlikely hero following a shooting that occurred during a robbery in Cleveland in the United States on Tuesday. Sixty-nine year old John McCurley was working in his shop, John’s Used Auto Parts on Meech Street, when a gunman walked into the store and demanded money. Sources say the gunman panicked when a customer, forty-seven year old Doug Jones, walked into the store, shot McCurley and ran for it. Amazingly, however, it seems that a handily placed cell phone situated on McCurley’s person may have deflected the course of the bullet and actually saved the man’s life.
A co-worker alerted store employee Steve Smith to the drama. “He came running across and said “the boss just got shot”, so I ran across the street,” Smith says. “There’s a guy sitting on the stairs holding his belly… and I go in, my boss is laying in the hallways, just got two bullets in him.” Smith attempted to stabilize his long-time boss until paramedics arrived, only to make a startling discovery. The cell phone seemed to deflect the path of one of the bullets away from McCurley’s heart where it would surely have been fatal. “His phone was in his pocket, it was like crumpled up in his shirt, so I took his phone out,” Smith remembers. “It looked like an ice cream cone and I set it on the counter. And that’s when I ripped his shirt open and you could see the bullet hole was right under his nipple and apparently the phone deflected it down into his kidney… saved his life.”
The gunman has not yet been apprehended.