Man fires nail into his heart A Tennessee maintenance worker has had a lucky escape after he fired a nail into his heart. Father-of-ten Joe Kern, 52, said he could feel his heart beating through the nail. The accident happened when he slipped while using a nail gun to carry out repairs on a trailer in Dickson, Tennessee. Surgeons removed the three-and-a-quarter inch nail and Mr Kern is due to go home in a few days. He said: "It was freak accident. I slid when I pulled the trigger. The head of the nail was sticking out of my body. A good inch of it was in the breast bone. I had a good idea it hit the heart because I could feel the heart beat through the nail." However, instead of going straight to hospital, he wanted to tell his wife Pam what had happened. "I wanted to be the one to tell her because I knew she'd come apart," he told Nashville's News 2 WKRN. "I picked up my tools. I parked my truck. If I'd had a claw hammer I'd have pulled it out myself." A co-worker drove him home before he was air-lifted to hospital in Vandy where surgeons removed the nail and repaired a hole in his right ventricle. Copyright 2001 Ananova Ltd