13 WTHR - Indianapolis News |Lebanon woman stabs self with sword

Lebanon woman stabs self with sword

Richard Essex/Eyewitness News

Lebanon - A woman is recovering in a Boone County hospital after injuring herself with a three-foot sword over the weekend.

Katherine Gunther put a hole in her left foot in a cemetery early Saturday with a sword she was wielding as part of a Wiccan ceremony.

"The I plunged the sword into the ground and my foot was there," said Gunther, a practicing Wiccan. "I don't do animal sacrifices or anything like that."

"I didn't even know they existed in Lebanon, 'til I got the call," said Keith Neher of the Lebanon Police Department.

The ceremony involves finding a person's center, in a circle, done during prayer and praise. It's part of what Gunther calls a celebration of good fortune which, according to her religion, is done during a full moon.

"Do what they call their circle, and she said her foot was in the center of the circle," Neher said. "At the end of this circle ritual, she drives this sword into the ground and her foot happened to be where she was wanting to drive the sword."

"I was gonna perform a ceremony of thanks and I usually take my sword and I use my sword to determine my center of my circle and my foot was kinda in my way," Gunther said.

The blade went right through her foot and into the ground - she wasn't wearing shoes.

"Then I freaked out and pulled it out," Gunther said.

Gunther and her friends had come to the cemetery to meditate. She said it was a nice, quiet place for them to perform their ceremony and she will also tell you that the irony of what happened is not lost on her, either.

"It's like all you can do is laugh at it now. All you can do when something like this happens is make the best out of it," she said.

The case is now in the hands of the prosecutor's office for review. Gunther calls it a horrible accident.