Cop’s life saved by a rock to the head — and the tumor it revealed

For policeman Barak Daddon, getting hit in the head by a rock during a Jerusalem funeral may have been the best thing that ever happened to him.

Daddon, a superintendent, was commanding police forces securing a Haredi funeral in the capital some six months ago, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

Clashes erupted between the masses that took part in the event and police officers attempting to uphold restrictions on gatherings, and Daddon was hit in the head with a rock, sending him to the hospital.

“The only stone that was thrown hit me in the head,” he told Channel 13 this week. “I lost consciousness.”

Hospital staff examining the injury came to the conclusion that the injury was mild, but stumbled upon a far more worrying find during a CT scan: a large tumor in Daddon’s head.

“When I came out of the CT, the X-ray technician asks me, ‘Have you ever had surgery in your head?’ I said no, I’m a healthy person,” Daddon recounted.

“He said, ‘Come sit down. The good news is you don’t have any bleeding in your head from the rock.’ I said: ‘And…?'”

The technician replied: “We’ve found something.”

Daddon, whose wife was pregnant with their second child at the time, said he was shocked and terrified by the news.

“My world was shattered,” he said. “I imagined my wife as a widow with two kids, I fell apart.”

The hospital scheduled urgent surgery to remove the tumor from Daddon’s brain, and he began months of difficult treatments to cure his cancer.

Daddon is now healthy and back at his job — except when he’s with his family and baby boy.

“This uniform is my life,” he said. “I don’t know anything other than the force. That’s my health.”