‘He’s Superman’: Marine Survives Shooting By Plugging His Bullet Wounds With His Fingers
Marine Karl Trenker. His fiance calls him, a U.S. Marine, “superman.” And when you hear Karl Trenker’s story, that might not be too far off.
Trenker’s fiance recently placed an ad on Craigslist to sell a gold necklace. But when Trenker, instead of his fiance, went to meet the potential buyers last Wednesday, they weren’t really interested in making a deal. Instead, one of the men grabbed the chain and ran with it. Trenker, 29, decided to chase him. That’s when the robber pulled a gun on the veteran and shot him several times in the chest and torso.
“I was pointing out the caret marks on the chain to him, and then kind of pick it up, put it in his hands and said, ‘Yeah, that feels real,’ and then he just took off running,” he
told local news outlets, including WSVN-TV.
“I dialed my phone and called my fiance and said, ‘Listen I’ve been shot I think three times,” he later added:
“I can’t believe this,” said Trenker. “I go to Iraq and Afghanistan multiple times, and I haven’t been shot or blown up, and I’m here at home in Florida, and here I am riding in an ambulance with a bunch of gunshot wounds.”
His fiance, Tanya Saiz, couldn’t believe it either. Initially, she was the one who might have been making the sale. But what’s more unbelievable to her is the way Trenker responded.
The two assailants, Steele (L) and Flounory (R). “I mean, it’s amazing to me how this guy had been shot this many times. I mean, he’s Superman, you know, and he‘s talking to me just as calmly as I’m sitting here talking to you know,” she told WSVN. “He told me, ‘I’ve been shot three times, my fingers are in the bullet holes, the police are going to take care of the kids.’ So really when you think about it, he saved my life because those guys were expecting me to be there, not him.”
The assailant, 20-year-old Jeff Steele, and his accomplice, James Flounory — also 20, remain in jail without bond.
As for Trenker, he has a message for them.
“If he didn’t have a pistol I would’ve whipped his butt.”
