Sun Valley Man Impaled on Bar After Fall

A Sun Valley man was in good condition Sunday after falling off a ladder onto a metal reinforcing bar that penetrated his chest, narrowly missing his heart and other vital organs.

Randy Harris, 47, was flown to St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, where he underwent surgery to remove the bar from his right flank, said Karen Marlin, a nursing supervisor at the hospital.

The bar “miraculously” missed Harris’ heart by half an inch and did not rupture his liver, gallbladder or lungs, Marlin said.

The accident occurred about 2:30 p.m. at a trailer park in the 8200 block of Lankershim Boulevard while Harris, a mail-room supervisor at Cal State Northridge, was on a ladder trying to repair his broken rain gutter, said his neighbor, Marie Teets, 73. Rainwater from the gutter was soaking her patio, she said.

‘Some People Are Handy’

“But he’s got two left feet,” said Teets, who described Harris as a close friend ever since he moved into the trailer park 12 years ago. “You have some people who are handy and then there are some who are not.”

Teets said she first thought Harris was just being dramatic when he began calling from his back yard that he was dying. Harris had fallen backward off the ladder onto a 4-foot-long reinforcing bar sticking up from the ground, Teets said.

The bar may have been used to hold up a plant stand, said Wade Jones, a spokesman for the Los Angeles City Fire Department, which responded to Teets’ emergency call. But Teets said the bar served no apparent purpose.

Jones said firefighters had to use a hacksaw to cut off the end of the bar protruding from Harris’ back before he was taken to the hospital.

In a telephone interview from his home in Bellevue, Wash., Harris’ brother, Gregory, said: “Randy has never been mechanically minded. . . . I was always the one who could take a car engine apart and put it back together again. But he was an artist, and I can’t even draw a circle.

“Thank God. He’s lucky to be alive,” he added.