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15th May 2019

US farmer cuts off his own leg with a pen knife after getting trapped in machine

Alan Loughnane

US farmer pen knife

He crawled 200 feet to the nearest phone.

A Nebraska farmer is recovering after cutting off his own leg with a pen knife to save himself from a piece of farm equipment he was caught in.

Omaha television station KETV reported that 63-year-old Kurt Kaser was unloading corn last month when he got out of his truck and accidentally stepped on the grain hopper opening.

The interior of the machine is shaped like a screw and twists to pull up grain.

He told the Omaha World-Herald: “I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid it was going to suck me in more. I about gave up and let it do what it was going to do.

“It’s hard to describe. You want to survive and you do what you need to do to survive, I guess.”

He was forced to cut off his lower leg with a 3in pen knife and crawled 200 feet to the nearest phone to call for help.

He was airlifted to hospital where he spent weeks rehabilitation before returning home on Friday.

Kaser said he’d removed a safety covering at the end of the auger in the winter to make the equipment fit under a grain bin.

He said: “I was in a hurry and didn’t pay attention. Farmers, we’re all guilty of it but we don’t stop and think. We get in too big a hurry.

“Everybody says ‘You seem so upbeat about it’. I know I will be walking again fairly normally. Other people can’t, won’t ever.”

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