iPhone 5S saves Fresno State student from getting shot by a robber

Despite the supposed fragility of modern-day smartphones relative to the phones of yore, a surprisingly large number of them have successfully stopped bullets and prevented their owners from sustaining further injury or, in some cases, death. You can now count this iPhone 5S as yet another in the list, reports The Fresno Bee.

A Fresno State student was on his way home and nearly reached his front door when someone came up to him from behind and reached for the student’s laptop bag, according to Fresno police lieutenant Joe Gomez. With a black semi-automatic handgun in hand, the robber then fired one shot at the student.

From such a close range, even a non-lethal gunshot would still be capable of incurring some serious damage. Luckily for the student (relatively speaking), not only did the robber aim at the student’s leg, but the student had his iPhone 5S in his pants pocket, preventing the bullet from breaking his skin, or much else.

The student was unharmed, though the robber ran off with his laptop bag and the silver HP laptop inside it.

As previously mentioned, this student’s iPhone 5S isn’t the first phone to prevent injury or death by a gunshot, or even the first iPhone. Back in May, a British man survived a close-range shotgun blast thanks to the iPhone 5C in his breast pocket. According to the detective handling the case, were it not for the man’s iPhone, he would have died.

While not quite protecting its owner from a gunshot wound, another iPhone 5S prevented its owner’s death by protecting him from a metal bar that would have surely killed him in an incident that occurred back in June. Say what you will about how delicate modern-day phones supposedly are, they still have the capacity to save lives — literally.