A Northern California man was seriously injured after a frozen water balloon was thrown through his windshield while he was driving home from work, causing chunks of glass to hit his face and impale his eyes, he told ABC News.
“I was a completely random victim just driving home from work,” 28-year-old Alex Plant told ABC News.
The incident occurred on Thursday at approximately 9:30 p.m. when Plant was driving along Highway 20 just outside of Marysville, California, he said.
While he was traveling along the two-lane highway, he noticed an oncoming car and then, about a quarter-second later, he felt “an impression of something in front of me.”
“And then boom, I get impacted in the face by something,” Plant said.
At first, Plant wasn’t aware of what struck him. Then, he began to feel glass powder in his eyes and noticed a breeze coming through his windshield, he said.
“I managed to open my eyes for a second and I saw the big hole,” he said.
Once his eyes began to swell shut, Plant pulled off to the side of the road — avoiding oncoming traffic and a nearby irrigation canal — and called an ambulance, he said.
Plant did not know what the cause of the accident was until he was in the ambulance and heard people saying they had found water balloon pieces and his car was full of ice, he said.
The California Highway Patrol — which was at the scene with paramedics — told ABC News they are investigating the incident and are looking into any surveillance footage in the area.
In the emergency room, Plant’s eyes had to be flushed multiple times as hospital officials attempted to remove the chunks of glass. At one point, a piece of glass, almost an eighth of an inch in size, was removed from underneath his eyelid.
“That explains why I felt like my eyelid was on fire,” Plant said.
About six hours later, Plant was able to return home, he said.
Four days after the incident, Plant said he still has sensitivity to light and the vision in his left eye has returned completely, but in his right eye, “everything has a slight fuzz.”
While Plant is recovering from the accident and will need to see a specialist to further treat his eye, he said he is “grateful” that he was the one who was hit, as a prior car accident 10 years ago had “mentally prepared” him for this one.
“That could have been somebody’s grandparents going out somewhere. That could have been somebody’s grandma or grandpa or some 16-year-old high school kid taking out the car to go to the gas station for the first time. That kind of individual probably wouldn’t have been able to handle themselves in the way that I did and pull over and have the wherewithal to ask Siri to call 911,” Plant told ABC News.
Officials said anyone with more information on the incident should contact the California Highway Patrol.
