A Wyoming boy narrowly escaped death after taking a skate to the neck during a hockey game.
Carter Lein, 11, was playing defense in his team’s final game of the season when he accidentally tripped an opponent, sending the other youngster flying.
The other player’s skate ended up slicing into the boy’s neck, just under his ear.
His terrified parents rushed to his side.
“You hear about these things happening, but you don’t ever think it could happen to you,” Carter’s mom, Lauren Lein, told The Post, calling it “every parent’s worst nightmare.”
“It was heartbreaking,” she said. “He kept telling me ‘I’m so scared, I don’t know what to do.’”
At first, the boy didn’t feel any pain because of the adrenaline, but once he did, he was terrified, he told Oil City News.
“Am I going to die?” Carter recalled thinking as he realized what had happened.
His mom held Carter’s blood covered hand, comforting him as they waited for the ambulance to arrive.
At least 20 different people dialed 911, Lein said. Paramedics showed up a few minutes later and rushed Carter to hospital a couple blocks away, where it took eight stitches to close the wound.
A CT scan showed the gruesome cut was just an inch away from major arteries, his family said.
Lauren Lein credited the neck guard her son was wearing with saving his life.
“The doctors said if the neck guard wasn’t there, the skate would have gone to his jugular,” said Lein. “We’d be telling a very different story.”
USA Hockey has been requiring neck protectors since August, after former National Hockey League player Adam Johnson was killed during a November 2023 game in the United Kingdom when a mid-ice collision resulted in another player’s skate blade slicing his neck.
The pain from Carter’s injury has lessened and the boy has returned to school, his mom said.
“He’s been a rockstar,” she said.
He hasn’t decided if he wants to return to hockey.
“We’re comfortable with any choice he makes,” she said.
