January 5, 2013
By Michael Abramowitz, Reflector.com
GREENVILLE — Joe Liuzza got home alive, but just barely.
Only through grit and determination was he able to win his battle against nature and pull himself and his mangled leg out of a swamp following a hunting-related accident near Robersonville that turned into a 14-hour ordeal.
“There’s no pheasant around here, so I went hunting deer on Sunday (Dec. 9).
I was by myself,” Liuzza said.
Liuzza went to his father’s property near Robersonville, which he had not hunted before, and decided it had possibilities.
He carried his 30-30 lever-action Winchester rifle, a deer stand, a belt pack with a knife, three bullets, a first aid kit, gloves and a cellphone in his pocket.
Liuzza picked a suitable tree on which to set his stand about 20 feet high.
After two or three hours, with darkness setting in and no deer spotted, Liuzza decided to call it a day and get down from the tree. He first lowered his rifle to the ground and leaned it against a nearby tree, then undid his safety harness and reached for his equipment on the other tree. But his stand suddenly collapsed.
“It happened instantly,” Liuzza said. “I went straight down and felt my right leg pop as I hit the ground and tumbled into the water. I felt the pain shoot all the way to my head.”
He made it home to his wife, then to the hospital. Portions of the two bones he shattered are gone, and the twisted shards of bone ends had torn away part of the skin from his leg.