Number 9 Lauren Scruggs On December the 3rd of 2011, Lauren Scruggs
took to the skies above McKinney, Texas, in a single-engine plane piloted by her friend.
They’d planned to see the Christmas lights from the air.
As she stepped off the aircraft, in the dark, Scruggs walked towards the front of the wing
and was struck by its still-spinning propeller.
The blades struck her in the head and sliced off her left hand causing her to collapse
in a pool of blood.
The 22-year-old also suffered a brain injury and her left eye subsequently had to be removed.
Doctors were initially unsure she was going to survive but she made a remarkable recovery,
eventually being fitted with a prosthetic eye and hand.
Within a year she returned to work as the editor of the fashion publication LOLO magazine.
She released two books, with the first detailing how the accident had impacted her life.
The link to both books is available in the description below.
Scruggs was unsure the extent to which her injuries would affect her relationships but,
in 2014, she married entertainment journalist Jason Kennedy.
Number 8 Jorge Casillas Castellanos On December the 5th of 2020, a Mexican businessman
was killed after being struck by the rapidly rotating blades of a helicopter.
52-year-old Jorge Casillas Castellanos was at Rancho El Gallito, in the municipality
of Singuilucan.
Castellanos, an aviation enthusiast and the president of a local tequila company, was
among a group that had been watching the approach of a small red helicopter.
The aircraft landed and its blades were still spinning when Castellanos started walking
towards it.
A video, which subsequently became viral on social media, captured the exact moment that
he was struck in the head by the propeller.
The blow caused him to instantly drop to the ground.
He was airlifted to the General Hospital of Tulancingo, where doctors struggled to save
his life.
Unfortunately his wound was too large and brain matter was exposed.
Castellanos went into cardiac arrest several times before ultimately succumbing to his
injuries.
Number 7 Danny Round Two months into a dream trip at sea with his
friends, New Zealand man Danny Round narrowly avoided death after a storm threw him from
his boat.
An experienced sailor, the 32-year-old had left his companions to explore Fiji on a powered
dinghy.
He ventured towards one of the most remote islands in the South Pacific.
As he returned to his 1984 sailboat, he was caught in strong winds.
The boat’s bow started to lift off the water and then came down hard.
Round was catapulted off it and, in the process, lost his grip on the kill cord.
The dinghy went over his body and up to his head, carving into his flesh with its propeller.
He suffered lacerations to his feet, waist, hands and chest but his face was the worst
affected.
Round was left with several displaced teeth, a broken jaw and three skull fractures.
Looking back on the incident, he remembered that the adrenaline had kept him going and
prevented him from passing out from the pain and drowning.
Another sailor spotted his boat spinning out of control and went to investigate only to
find Round, still in the water, with blood floating around him.
Round survived and received at least 150 stitches.
He was airlifted to a hospital in a rescue operation that also involved help from the
navy.
Metal plates were inserted into his face and cartilage from his ear was transferred in
an attempt to fix his nose.
Even though the extensive cuts he’d suffered on his face had left him scarred for life,
Round returned to the sea shortly after the accident.
Number 6 Danielle Crease In September of 2013, before she was planning
to leave for Taiwan on a teaching job, Miami woman Danielle Crease was on a weekend boating
trip with her friends.
As she jumped in the water, Crease was struck by a passing boat and its propeller mutilated
her leg.
Her Achilles tendon was ripped off and her sciatic nerve was severed.
Crease remembered being thrown around like “being in a washing machine” as blood
started pooling around her.
The personal trainer was taken to the hospital where her father was told that she wasn’t
going to make it.
Crease had been fighting the intubation and had to be restrained.
She required a wound vacuum, often used on shrapnel injuries, because her wounds were
too deep to heal naturally.
Crease was left paralyzed in her left leg, from the knee down.
However, when she was first brought in the hospital, surgeons had collected samples of
her sciatic nerve.
Staff at the Miller School of Medicine/Jackson Memorial Hospital, in Miami, opted to regrow
the nerve in a lab.
Once the revolutionary procedure was approved, they grafted it with sural nerves from both
her legs.
They were certain that if she kept trying to flex her muscles, the movement would eventually
return.
In 2015, their suspicions came to fruition as Crease started to slightly move her foot.
Emboldened by the first sign of improvement, she worked tirelessly in the gym to get more.
While not fully restored, Crease was eventually able to do most of the activities she’d
enjoyed prior to the accident.
Number 5 Simon Houlder In 2020, a man from East Yorkshire, England,
succumbed to massive blood loss following a prank which had gone horribly wrong.
Simon Houlder was celebrating his 30th birthday on the vessel along with six of his closest
friends.
After having a few drinks the men started joking around and pushing each other in the
water.
Two of them were brought back aboard the boat, without incident.
However, after Houlder was pushed in the water, he already started swimming towards the vessel
as it was reversing.
Friend Frederick Collins saw what was happening and that an accident was imminent.
He shouted at Houlder to climb from the side while also telling the driver to stop reversing.
Unfortunately, his pleas went unheard, drowned out by the engine’s noise.
Collins remembered seeing dread etched on Houlder’s face as he came within 3 feet
of the boat and realized it wasn’t stopping.
He disappeared underwater and then resurfaced on the side after the propeller had ravaged
his body.
Three of his friends jumped in to save him.
Houlder was airlifted to Addenbrooke Hospital, in Cambridge, where he later passed away from
the cuts he’d sustained on his leg, which had caused massive hemorrhaging.
Number 4 Chris Wright In July of 2007, pilot Chris Wright was struck
in the head by the wooden propeller of his sport biplane, nearly two years after he’d
been involved in a plane crash that almost cost him his life.
Shortly before 12 pm, 39-year-old Wright was hand turning the propeller at the Pryor Field
Regional Airport, in Limestone County, Alabama.
He leaned in to grab it for a second turn when the propeller fired.
Wright lost his balance and fell head-first into its rotation.
It struck him, twice, before the engine stopped.
The blows had breached his skull, inflicting a 9-inch gash in the back of his head.
He was airlifted to a hospital where he was pronounced as being in stable condition after
receiving roughly 52 stitches.
It was a better prognosis than the one following the August 2005 crash.
At the time, Wright rode as a passenger and the aircraft went down near Trinity.
Its pilot was killed in the crash.
Wright spent nearly two months recovering in the hospital and, several months after
that, he had to re-learn how to walk and talk.
Number 3 Kristina Dejesus In October of 2017, New Jersey nurse Kristina
Dejesus was on a trip to Texas with some of her childhood friends.
The group took a boat out on Austin’s Lake Travis.
As they were in the water, Dejesus’ arm was severed by the boat’s propeller, from
the shoulder, so swiftly that she didn’t even feel it.
The group began to panic and the current started pulling them away from the boat.
Fortunately, a second vessel was present in the area and its crew intercepted them on
a jet ski.
Dejesus was pulled onto a speed boat where, upon trying to apply pressure to her wound,
she realized that she no longer had her right arm.
Her training as an ICU nurse kicked in and she gave those on board the instructions they
needed to save her life.
The men, both of whom had military experience, followed the steps, as instructed, before
bringing her to a dock where they were met by an ambulance.
Dejesus was flown to an emergency room by helicopter and woke up on life-support.
The 32-year-old woman survived her ordeal and gradually adapted to her life as an amputee.
She was fitted with a myoelectric-controlled prosthetic arm which moved by using signals
from her shoulder muscles.
In what she described as an act of getting closure, Dejesus returned to Lake Travis,
with her friends, on the one year anniversary of the accident.
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Number 2 Christina Kurylo In 2014, Air Canada passenger Christina Kurylo
was on a domestic flight from Calgary to Grand Prairie.
During takeoff, the Q400 twin-engine turboprop blew a tire and was unable to turn back or
continue to its destination.
As a result, it crash-landed in Edmonton, about 200 miles north from where it had departed.
When the aircraft hit the ground, the landing gear collapsed on the right side.
Consequently one of its propellers came loose and sliced through the cabin.
Kurylo was struck by the blade, in the head, after it breached the wall.
Amazingly, she survived the blow.
A friend, who was on the same flight, noted that she’d sustained a “huge head lump”
along with multiple bruises and scratches.
Kurylo was treated for a concussion as one of four passengers to be hospitalized at the
University of Alberta Hospital, in the crash’s aftermath.
Number 1 Ivan Andrés López Londoño In April of 2018, a helicopter crashed in
Columbia’s southwestern Cauca District, following technical difficulties.
It was carrying valuable equipment and, roughly a week later, a second helicopter was dispatched
to the area on a recovery mission.
It had made four successful visits but the fifth went horrifically wrong.
Maintenance manager Ivan Andrés López Londoño was on the ground, directing the aircraft’s
approach.
A video, captured during the recovery mission, showed the moment that the helicopter suddenly
started to overturn as it approached the side.
Londoño was in the path of its propeller and was brutally mowed down.
He sustained devastating injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene.
The pilot also sustained bruising and an unspecified wrist injury.
An investigation was launched into the incident to determine if weather conditions, equipment
malfunctioning or a piloting error had been at play in the incident.
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