Prisoner plucks out own eye in front of corrections officers … twice

The Crazy America team are more shock resistant than most. But some human actions are so unimaginably horrific that even we struggle to process them.

Certainly, the grisly events that unfolded at New York City’s Rikers Island prison complex late last week confound understanding.

Corrections officers looked on in horror Friday as a disturbed inmate ripped out his own left eye.

The gruesome incident took place inside a medical clinic in the island’s Anna M. Kross Center, the New York Post reports.

The eyeball was left dangling but still attached to the optic nerve as officers rushed to restrain the prisoner, since identified by the Daily Mail as 38-year-old Rafael Ramos.

Doctors were able to reinsert the organ after Ramos was held down on a stretcher and rushed for emergency treatment.

However, he somehow managed to grab a nearby implement, possibly a plastic spoon or fork, which he used to gouge out the eye a second time.

What Ramos was doing in the clinic in the first place and how he got another chance to inflict such terrible self-harm is unclear.

The Department of Correction’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Peter Thorne indicated that “a full investigation” was already underway.

“This was a seriously disturbed, mentally ill individual,” an unidentified source close to the incident said.