Large metal object smashes through windshield, hits a man in the face in North Fort Myers

A metal object came flying through a couple’s windshield after visiting a show at the Lee Civic Center in North Fort Myers. The metal object hit the man who was driving, leaving him unresponsive with his foot on the gas.

As the North Carolina couple was traveling west on Bayshore Road, a heavy piece of metal went through the windshield of their truck and into Ian Beaver’s face.

“I saw the truck in front of us, and I thought, ‘This is it, we’re going to die,'” said Billie Jean Beaver, Ian Beaver’s wife, who was sitting in the passenger seat of the truck.

Just hours after the crash on Jan. 28, she posted a video to social media to let her friends and family know what happened.

“That accident was awful,” said Billie Jean. “The other problem is he was knocked unconscious after he got hit. I felt the truck going faster and faster, and I was reaching over trying to get his foot off the gas, and I couldn’t.”

The couple’s truck smashed into the car in front of them and spun into a ditch along Bayshore Road.

“When he got to the emergency room, his chin was hanging,” Billie Jean Beaver said.

Ian spent 15 days on a ventilator. He suffered dozens of fractures in his face, requiring surgeons to wire his jaw shut.

“It’s been very hard and difficult,” said Ian Beaver from the hospital.

“This is the metal piece that changed our lives. It weighs about 15-20 pounds. As you can see, I can barely lift it,” Billie Jean Beaver said. “[Ian] is going to need bone grafting, gum grafting, lip surgery and extensive dental work. He’s missing five teeth, and he may lose three or four more.”

The pain is incredible, but if Billie Jean Beaver knows anything about her husband, it’s that he’s a fighter.

“God has a plan, and we’re living it,” she said.

The couple hopes to head back to North Carolina, but they need a doctor to give the go-ahead.

The truck that the piece of metal came from has not been found yet. The Beavers ask anyone near the crash scene along Bayshore Road in North Fort Myers the morning of Jan. 28 around 11:15 a.m. to check their cameras.