Boxer Survives Gunshot in Mouth : Accident: Bullet goes through Bray’s cheek. The lack of damage is called ‘incredible’ by doctor.

Boxer John Bray of Van Nuys, the national amateur heavyweight champion, narrowly escaped death this week when a nine-millimeter handgun he said he was cleaning discharged as he looked down the barrel.

Bray, 21, the likely U.S. representative in his division in the 1992 Olympic Games, was listed in good condition Thursday, two days after the accident, at Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills. The bullet entered his slightly open mouth and exited through his cheek.

“What happened is just incredible,” said Dr. Fred Leess, who operated on Bray on Tuesday night. “To sustain so little damage from such a thing is just incredible.”

Bray, resting in his hospital bed, the left side of his face badly swollen, called it a miracle.

“The doctors told me, an inch or two to the right and it would have blown my head off,” Bray said. “It didn’t even chip a tooth. I’ve felt much worse than this after some of my fights.”

Police from the Van Nuys Division investigated the shooting and concluded that it was an accident.

“The victim told us what happened; a witness, apparently the owner of the shop, told us what happened, and their stories matched perfectly,” Detective Craig Rhudy said. “There was nothing to make us think it was not an accident.”

Bray said that the shooting was, indeed, an accident.

“I know what people might think,” he said. “But believe me, I’ve got too much to live for. Everything is just ahead of me, the Olympics, everything.”

Bray said the shooting occurred at 8:30 Tuesday night in an automotive shop in Van Nuys owned by a friend, Victor Moreno, who witnessed the incident. Bray works as an apprentice private investigator and purchased the semi-automatic handgun June 17, he said, on his 21st birthday.

“I was cleaning it and removed the clip (holding the bullets) and then pulled the (cocking) slide back,” he said. “Then, to make sure there wasn’t a bullet in the chamber, I held the gun near my face and looked down the barrel. Then my hand slipped and it went off.”

Gun experts said that a semi-automatic weapon will not fire when the slide is released, that the trigger must be pulled to discharge the gun.

“The slide itself can’t fire a bullet unless the gun is defective,” said an employee of Art’s Guns in Canoga Park. “It could happen, but the chances are very, very remote. The trigger must be squeezed.”

Bray said he put the gun into its holster, walked to a sink and began to wash the blood away. Then, he said, he called paramedics and walked outside to wait for them. He was taken to the hospital and underwent surgery that night.

“He had lost a lot of blood,” Leess said. “But other than that, the lack of damage was incredible.”

The bullet entered Bray’s mouth at the left corner and exited high on the cheek, a centimeter from the jawbone, according to Leess.

“The really incredible thing is that the bullet didn’t shatter any facial nerves,” Leess said. “It went right through the area where all the facial nerves are centered, but didn’t snag a single one.”

Bray said his gun-carrying days are over.

“This bothers the hell out of me,” he said. “I’ve got to be the luckiest guy in the world. It was my first gun, and it was my last. I’ll never use one again.”

Bray was expected to be released from the hospital today.

He won the national amateur title earlier this year after losing in the championship bout at the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle. Last month, the 6-foot-3, 200-pound fighter won at the U.S. Olympic Festival in Los Angeles.

He is scheduled to fight Sept. 28 in Milan, Italy, in a U.S.-Italy meet, and then in the World Championships in November in Australia.

“There’s no reason he can’t be fighting again in a month or so,” Leess said. “This will have no impact, medically, on his career.

“He is a very lucky man.”