By A.S. Kinsman

Not many people can take a bullet to the head and live to tell about it. 54-year-old Scott Fraley of Raymond, Maine, was ice fishing on a frozen lake in West Gardiner with a friend when there was a loud bang, and then he felt a searing pain in the back of his head.

He had been shot. “We’re having a conversation and I hear a gun go off, a gunshot, and then all of a sudden it was as if somebody cracked me in the back of the head with a baseball bat and then I grabbed my head and I could feel that there was a big lump on my head. I didn’t know what had happened. I looked at my hand. I had a lot of blood on it,” Fraley recalled.

Incredibly, the gunshot wasn’t fatal. Fraley, an Army veteran, walked calmly off the ice, where he was tended to by first responders. Scott Fraley said first responders acted quickly, kindly and professionally.By the time Maine state troopers arrived on scene, shots were still being fired from the same gun that nearly killed Fraley.

Upon investigation, authorities discovered 21-year-old Bryan Hickey of West Gardiner, who was the shooter. Fraley and his friend had been near the West Gardiner Rod and Gun Club. Authorities still don’t know what exactly happened, but it appears that Hickey was apparently randomly shooting into the forest when a bullet ricocheted off a tree and hit Fraley out on the nearby lake.
Fraley said he never lost consciousness.

He was taken to Maine General in Augusta, where he was treated and released. The doctors decided against removing the bullet from Fraley’s skull, and instead will wait for the bullet to work itself out of his head without medical intervention.

Fraley says that he still has an incredible headache and ringing in his ears.

“People who use firearms should know what it is they’re doing and be extremely safe — that it’s not a toy.  If you’re going to point it, you need to know what you’re pointing it at and there’s just no excuse for that, zero because the consequences are irreversible,” he said.
Police are still trying to determine exactly why Hickey was shooting randomly into the trees. Charges have not been filed as of yet.
Fraley and his wife, Lisa, are still in shock by what happened, and are slowly processing how close he came to being seriously hurt or killed.
“You just never would think in a million years that he would be out with his friends on the lake on a gorgeous day and that could happen.” said Lisa Fraley, Scott Fraley’s wife.  “You just never would dream of it.”