The State - News from June 5, 1987

A man who was nearly dead after being chopped up with a machete was almost totally reassembled in a grueling 19-hour operation by a team of 23 specialists at San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Robert Markison, the hospital’s chief of hand surgery, said Roger Pruitt, 35, was near death when he arrived at the hospital from Eureka, 250 miles to the north. Pruitt’s left eye was gouged out, his nose broken, his head gashed “down to the brain,” his arms broken, and his left hand severed, Markison said. But efforts by surgeons were successful in repairing everything except the severed hand. “It had been chopped up in five places,” Markison explained, “so it wasn’t suitable for replantation.” Eureka police said they have arrested Serverio Chacon Lugo, 34, of Eureka, who was booked for investigation of mayhem and assault with a deadly weapon.