'You'll shoot your eye out,' may be the rallying cry parents use to keep kids away from slingshots and BB guns, but when it comes to fireworks, hands are the most at risk. A teen learned that while playing with a firework outside an In-N-Out Burger in California.
Eighteen-year-old Nader Hanna's hand was severed when the firework exploded in his hand, causing injuries so severe, the victim said his digits disintegrated right before his eyes.
“It just exploded in my hand the second I lit it,” Hanna told the San Francisco Chronicle. “My hand took the whole blow. I looked down and I didn’t see a hand. It disintegrated.”
Hanna's twin brother, Ramsey, called 911 and was quick-thinking enough to search for pieces of his brother's hand to take to the hospital, but there were none left.
Doctors were able to preserve his wrist.
The teen, who had just graduated from high school three days previously, said he was bored when he and some friends decided to entertain themselves by lighting fireworks in the parking lot.
"Of course it's dumb, but we've done other stuff like that where you just light it and chuck it," he explained to the Chronicle. The firework that exploded was about the size of a tennis ball, he added, and when it instantly exploded in his hand, he thought he was in a dream.
Officers did not cite Hanna because of the severity of his injuries, and police said there was not enough evidence about what went wrong to pursue a criminal investigation into the sale or distribution of the explosive.
