Millimetres from instant death

QUEENSLANDER Chaz White vividly remembers the steak knife flying straight at his eye.

"For a split second I could see the tip of the blade coming towards me," he said.

There wasn't time to duck and the sharp serrated blade plunged into the corner of his left eye, sliced its way behind his right eye and into his brain.

"I remember seeing the knife - I was yelling, 'I've got a knife hanging out of my eye'," Chaz, 21, said. "I could see it with my right eye and I was trying not to blink."

The knife, which penetrated 10cm into his head, narrowly missed vital arteries. Stunned medical staff marvelled at his millimetre escape from instant death.

An X-ray of Chaz's skull taken at the hospital shows how lucky he was to survive, the knife lodged in his eye socket.

Another angle from above shows just how deep the knife penetrated his skull, into his brain. "I'm told if it went in any further I would have been dead," said Chaz, from Yeppoon, near Rockhampton.

Royal Brisbane Hospital specialist Lawrence Lee said Chaz could easily have been killed. "He's really lucky the knife missed everything," the consultant opthalmologist said.

"He would have been gone if the knife had hit the carotid artery and blind if it hit the optic nerve.

"It was only a fraction of a millimetre away. "He's a pretty tough cookie."