Harry Whittington, the man US Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot while hunting, suffered a minor heart attack after pieces of birdshot lodged in his heart, doctors said. Doctors said there were no immediate fears for the life of the 78-year-old lawyer, who was accidentally shot by Cheney on Saturday during a hunting party.
A spokesman for the Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial in Corpus Christi, Texas, said the hospital was in contact with White House doctors.
The birdshot "basically has lodged in a certain area causing inflammatory changes. When that occurs it causes irritability," David Blanchard, emergency room chief at the hospital, told a new conference.
"At this point in time, there's no plans to do surgery to remove that bird shot," hospital spokesman Peter Banko told the news conference.
"It's fixed in the heart at this point in time. However it will require that we monitor Mr. Whittington for up to another seven days in the hospital to make sure no more bird shot moves into vital organs, as well as that piece of bird shot doesn't move anywhere else in the heart," the spokesman added.
Cheney shot the prominent Texas lawyer in the neck, face and chest with birdshot as the two were out quail hunting on a Texas ranch.
