Fifteen minutes into his new job: man loses both legs after a bizarre accident

The Denver Postan American local news website, reports the account of the dramatic first day on the job of John O’Neill, a 33-year-old American. He had only been working as an arborist for fifteen minutes when he grabbed a branch shaped like a fishing hook and threw it into the machine.

Because the end of O’Neill’s ankle bracelet got stuck, the man was dragged into the wood chipper. He lost both his feet and legs.

Fight for life

To make matters worse, his new colleagues did not hear O’Neill’s screams. “It took a minute for them to realize what was happening,” he says. “The pain was very bad. (…) It went very quickly from a fight for my limb to a fight for my life.”

During the helicopter flight to the hospital, O’Neill “technically died” because his heart stopped and the rest of his legs were amputated. He needed more than 15 liters of blood. “They basically replaced all the blood in my body.”