I sawed off my leg with a penknife
How farmer escaped horror accident
A DESPERATE farmer cut off his own leg with a pocket knife to save his life after he became trapped in a piece of equipment.
Kurt Kaser was unloading corn when he got out of his truck and accidentally stepped on the grain hopper opening.
The 63-year-old was pulled into an auger – a metal tube with an interior like a giant screw.
He was forced to cut off his lower leg with a 3in penknife before crawling to a phone for help.
Mr Kaser said: “When it first happened, I can remember telling myself, ‘this ain’t good. This is not good at all’. It just sucked my leg in and I was trying to pull it out, and it kept pulling.
“The bone stuck out down to my ankle. That’s what I was hanging on to as I was trying to get myself out.” Mr Kaser was working alone and didn’t have his mobile phone on him.
He added: ”I thought, ‘how long am I going to stay conscious here,’ you know? Because I didn’t know what to expect, and then I felt it jerk me again. I thought, ‘well, I was going in. [It’s] going to grab me and pull me in further.’”
So, he took his pocket knife out and sawed off his leg below the knee.
“When I was cutting it, the nerve endings, I could feel them just ping every time when I’d start sawing around that pipe. And all at once, it went and let me go, so I got the heck out of there,” Mr Kaser said.
The farmer spent weeks in hospital and rehabilitation before returning home to Pender, Nebraska, last week.
He said: “It is what it is. Make the best of it is all you can do. I mean, it coulda always been worse.” KURT KASER ON MOMENT HE BECAME TRAPPED 5
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I remember telling myself, ‘this ain’t good, this is not good at all’