Native witnesses amputation of hand by zip line
Twenty-three-year-old Justin Bell watched in horror this weekend as a Cayce teenager sliding on an overhead zip line dropped into the Saluda River and came up screaming from a pool of bloody water.
"His entire hand had been ripped off - amputated," Bell said.
Bell, an Aiken native and 2003 Aiken High School graduate, said he, his girlfriend, Ashley Whisonant, and friends Josh Temples and Anna Burns had gone to the Saluda River Sunday afternoon to relax.
It was just after 2 p.m. when the two couples went for a walk with the dog, following a trail about a half mile into the woods. The trail ended near the water, Bell said.
A zip line hung overhead, and Bell said it looked like a person could just grab ahold of it and drop off into the water.
"The next thing I knew, a teenage boy had grabbed it," Bell said. "I watched him drop off into the water."
Suddenly, the teenager was in a pool of bloody water. When he came up for air, he was clutching a bleeding right arm with his left hand. "He was yelling, 'my hand,'" Bell said. "Honestly, at first I thought he was joking. I thought he was playing a trick."
But in a matter of seconds, Bell started to put two and two together. He figured the man had gotten his hand caught up in the zip wire.
"I knew it was bad," he said.
Bell began yelling, too, calling for his friends to call 911. Lexington EMS was on its way, but the teenager was not quite to shore yet.
"It took me a minute, maybe a minute and a half, to get down to him," Bell said. "He had pulled himself out of the water by that point, but his hand was gone. It looked like a surgeon's cut, completely straight."
One of the other teens who was at the water with the injured man stripped off his shirt and tied it to the arm in an effort to stop the bleeding.
"But every time his heart pumped, blood would spurt out," Bell explained.
Bell's friend, Josh, pulled off his belt and tied a tourniquet on the young man's arm.
They started back up the trail with the teenager, heading as quickly as they could to the parking lot, but Bell said he knew they had a long walk ahead.
The teenager was walking slowly. He was woozy and not feeling well.
"I just kept talking to him," Bell said.
A few minutes later, EMS pulled up, and they loaded the teenager into the ambulance.
A Lexington County Sheriff's Office deputy approached Bell.
"He wanted to get the hand," Bell said. "I saw the kid go in the water, and I had a good idea of where it might be, so we headed back down (the trail)."
At the water's edge, the deputy called to a pair of fishermen in a johnboat, asking them to start looking for the severed hand. The cold water was about 8 to 10 feet deep where the teen fell, but it was perfectly clear, Bell said.
He headed in and was ankle deep in the water when one of the teen's friends called to say he had the hand.
"He picked it up from the bottom," Bell said.
About a half hour had passed since the accident, and Bell said he feared the hand may have been mangled by fish.
"It looked OK," he said.
The victim was already at Palmetto Health Richland, and Bell has since learned that Duke surgeons were attempting hand replantation.
"I don't know how it went," he said. "I think Josh saved his life by keeping him from bleeding to death."
Bell said he was glad just to be able to help.
Duke physicians have expertise in recontouring of trauma-related limb deformities, removal of trauma-related scars and hand replantation.
Duke surgeons say they can restore form and function and operate a 24-hour hand replantation service.
Contact Karen Daily at kdaily@aikenstandard.com.