15-year-old butt head into door handle in a competition with schoolmates.
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
A 15-year-old boy died on Monday, two weeks after butting his head into the door handle of his Haifa high school in a competition with schoolmates. Doctors at Rambam Medical Center who treated him said the impact to his brain, which was immediately and critically injured, was as if he had fallen from a fifth-floor window.
Itai Greenberg, who is survived by parents and a 17-year-old sister, was "fooling around" with friends in school two weeks ago at the Ironi Heh high school. Hospital spokesman David Ratner said the school, on the Carmel, is attended by children of well-off families.
He butted his head into the door and the handle fractured his skull behind his forehead, severing a major artery in the brain. He was rushed to Rambam, where doctors performed surgery to stop the bleeding and reduce inter-cranial pressure.
His doctors "couldn't understand how a head dive into a door could cause such terrible damage to the brain," said Ratner. "We have treated people who had gunshot wounds to the head, and they survived. But Itai couldn't be saved."
The ninth-grader was buried in Haifa on Monday afternoon, leaving behind brokenhearted parents and shocked teachers and pupils.