A tree surgeon today told how he feared he would die after slashing his neck with a chainsaw in an horrific accident.
Carl Moulton, 41, was in a harness, 15ft up a tree when the power tool sliced into his neck as he slipped on a wet branch.
The dad-of-four had been trimming a 60ft shrub at a primary school in Hammersmith when the accident happened.
He told the Standard: “I just slipped. Judging from the cuts and how it landed, it hit my arm and then rammed into my neck.
“My first thought was, ‘I’m not going to see my kids grow older. I’m a dead man, I’m a dead man.’
“But then I got some composure and realised I could still breathe and I could still talk.
“I was lucky I didn’t hit any major arteries.”
He lowered himself to the ground and his workmates bandaged him up and called an ambulance.
Mr Moulton, from Notting Hill, added. “I was waiting to feel faint but it didn’t come. Once the ambulance and the air ambulance arrived, I felt so relieved.
“I ended up going to hospital by road, I thought, ‘What’s a man got to do to get a helicopter ride around here?’”
Mr Moulton spent three days at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington receiving treatment for a six inch gash on his arm and a three inch neck wound after the accident on February 16.
He said: “I burst into tears when I saw my kids again. How the hell did I survive it? I just don’t know.”
