Man partied for days before realising he’d been shot in the head

Charlie Herbert

‘It was like an explosion inside my head’

We’ve all woken up from a night out and made a concerning discovery before. Maybe you ended up texting a certain someone. Maybe you thought it was a clever idea to empty your bank account by getting a whole round of drinks in. Maybe you need to quickly delete something from you Insta story.

Finding out you’ve been shot in the head is a bit extreme though.

This is what happened to Mateus Facio, a 21-year-old uni student from Brazil, who went on a New Year night out with some mates.

The group had been out on a beach in Cabo Frio, east of Rio de Janeiro, when Facio was hit in the head by what he assumed was just a stone.

Little did he know, it was a bit more serious than that.

He told Brazilian TV show Jornal Nacional: “I thought it was a stone, something like that.

“It was like the sound of an explosion, when a bomb goes off, but inside my head. The bleeding stopped, we left, I took a shower and went out partying.”

He added to Globo: “I went to take a nap and woke up with my arm feeling a little silly, my hand moving strangely, I felt my fingers moving, but I didn’t have the confidence to pick something up.”

But when he woke up on New Year’s Day, he thought nothing of it and headed to a local beach to carry on partying with his mates.

It was only during his 200-mile drive home on January 2 that he started to notice all was not well as he began to experience spasms in his right arm.

Then, on January 4, his right arm became “droopy” and he decided to go to the doctors to see what was wrong.

Needless to say, doctors were stunned by what they found.

The scan showing the bullet lodged in Facio’s skull (Mateus Facio)

Neurosurgeon Flavio Falcometa said: “Part of the bullet penetrated his brain which caused compression in that area and led to his arm’s involuntary movements.

“If it had ended up a few millimetres from where it did, it could have caused much more serious damage and left his arm or one side of his body paralyzed.”

After they discovered the bullet, Facio underwent emergency surgery to remove the bullet fragment and he is now recovering at home with his mum.

She said: “It’s inexplicable how someone can have a bullet lodged in their head for four days and survive. I feel like my son has been born again.”

Falcometa said Facio should be able to continue with his everyday life within “20 to 30 days.”

As part of their investigation as to you fired the gun, police have taken a statement from the student and are analysing the bullet fragment.