A SHOOTING victim owes his life to his iPhone after being blasted by a faulty shotgun.
Retired factory health and safety officer Graham Wheeler, 69, of Stinchcombe, told a judge yesterday that he had the phone in his shirt chest pocket and it protected the vital area of his heart.
But even though the phone saved his life, 140 pellets were lodged in his left arm and chest – and they are still there.
Doctors have decided it is safer to leave them for the rest of his life than to try to remove them all, he said.
"I'm fine now," he told Judge Jamie Tabor QC at Gloucester Crown Court.
"Your iPhone saved your bacon?," asked the judge. "Yes, it absorbed a lot of the pellets and left a nice little black patch on my chest," replied Mr Wheeler.
Mr Wheeler was one of three people wounded by the shotgun going off in the hands of BMW garage boss David Richards, 44, at the clay pigeon event last year.
Richards, of May Hill, was originally charged with wounding Mr Wheeler with intent to cause him grievous bodily harm as well as unlawfully wounding the other two people.
But at court the prosecution accepted his claim that he had no intent to harm anyone and that the cheap, poorly made, shotgun was faulty and he had not pulled the trigger.
He pleaded guilty to unlawfully wounding Mr Wheeler, 56-year-old Trudi Chinn, and Paul Murray, 40, at the shoot in Longhope on November 27.
Richards runs an independent BMW garage in Gloucester and entered the pleas after Judge Tabor said he would not pass an immediate jail term.
Mrs Chinn, 56, said she still has one pellet lodged in her head and her hearing has been badly affected by the blast.
The third victim of the shooting, Mr Murray, was injured in the arm, where nine pellets lodged, but has recovered well.
The judge bailed Richards for a pre-sentence report saying he wanted to know "a great deal more about him". He will return on December 21.
