Vincent Solari, 16, Feels Like 'The Luckiest Unlucky Person' After Getting Hit In Head By Stray Bullet In River Forest, Surviving
RIVER FOREST, Ill. (CBS) -- One second, an Oak Park teenager was sitting outside – and the next, a bullet came out nowhere and hit him in the head.
Vincent Solari, 16, is now out of the hospital. He talked only two CBS 2's Charlie De Mar about what happened on Sunday, the 4th of July in River Forest.
It is pretty incredible that Solari is talking and alert after he was shot in the head by that bullet.
River Forest police believe the bullet traveled a far distance before hitting the teen — possibly fired from outside the village.
"It hit right here, you see - this is where it ended up being," Solari said as he pointed to the spot on the left side his head just above his forehead where a bullet fell from the sky and hit him. "I'm looking down kind of into my hands like this, and then I get hit by something."
The 16-year-old was outside at a friend's house in River Forest shortly after 10 p.m. on July 4th when he felt the pain.
"Someone asked me what's wrong and I feel up, and I feel the bump," Solari said.
Meanwhile, parents at Solari's friend's home frantically called his parents, Joe and Suze.
"(They said), 'Suze, there's a projectile that's hit Vincent and it's a lot of blood, but he's talking and he's fine," Suze Solari said.
Despite a bump and some blood, Solari was conscious and alert as he was taken to the hospital. And it wasn't until the X-ray that Solari had a pretty good idea of what happened – the X-ray showed where the bullet lodged.
"We had a feeling it was a bullet when they did CT scan and it showed a very bullet-shaped metal object," Solari said.
The bullet was pulled from his head in seemingly perfect condition.
"After I had realized that there was a bullet in my head and I wasn't dead yet, I wasn't really that worried," Solari said, "because I thought, well, it can't get worse from here, It's already in there."
Joe and Suze Solari are well aware that the situation could be drastically worse.
"We could be planning a funeral right now," said Joe Solari. "That was an inch one way or another of fundamentally changing all of our lives."
De Mar asked Vincent Solari if he considers himself lucky.
"Yeah," he said. "The odds a bullet coming out the sky and hitting you are low, but the odds of surviving a bullet hitting your skull are also very low, so I can say I'm like the luckiest unlucky person."
River forest police said the bullet traveled a far distance before hitting Solari, and determined it was fired from a 9mm firearm.
The River Forest police chief says the bullet is still in pristine condition and will be sent to the state forensic lab to analyze in the hopes of potentially finding the shooter.
