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9-Year-Old Loses Left Hand In Fireworks Blast

By Tabitha Britt
Published on: 15:02 PST, Jul 4, 2016

According to police, a 9-year-old girl lost her left hand in an illegal fireworks blast on Saturday, as July 4th celebrations injured people across the nation.

Hundreds of civilians from the east coast to the west have been hospitalized due to serious injuries caused by fireworks, including one Nebraska man whose hand was blown off and hurled 90 feet away.

According to the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, explosive and arson detectives are currently investigating the 12:30 p.m. firecrackers in Burrell-MacDonald Pak in Compton, Cali.

“They came out and saw her standing at the park and her entire left hand was missing,” St. Daniel Tobin told the Los Angeles Times. “She was just in shock and they quickly grabbed her, put her in a car and whisked her to the hospital. Unfortunately, the damage was beyond any sort of repair.”

Doctors amputated the young victim’s left hand and several fingers from her right hand. She also received treatment for blast injuries to her face but was reported to be in stable condition.

“Unfortunately, the patrol deputies weren’t notified for a couple of hours after the explosion, so we didn’t get out to the scene for several hours,” Tobin said. “The park was littered with fireworks debris that may or may not be related to this explosion.”

According to a report by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, firework injuries hit a 15-year high in 2015 with 11,900 people treated in hospital emergency rooms.

“Anything that would cause the sort of explosive trauma that was caused here is illegal everywhere in the United States,” Tobin said. “The type of fireworks that are legal in some municipalities would not cause this type of trauma unless they are modified.”

In Chicago, three police officers were rushed to the hospital after firework-related incidents over the holiday weekend.

Chicago police department spokeswoman Officer Nicole Trainor told the Chicago Tribune someone inside of a moving red Toyota Camry tossed “half a stick of dynamite” out of the window at a squad car two officers were using to patrol the South Shore neighborhood around 4:20 p.m. on Sunday. Although the squad car’s windows were rolled up, the explosion disabled the vehicle on South Exchange Avenue.

Both officers were found in good condition with non-life threatening injuries after the explosion.

A “small novelty firework” that was placed underneath of a toilet at the department’s 17th District station went off when an officer went into the restroom around 5:50 a.m. Monday morning, Trainor told the local newspaper.

A 911 call was made by Justin Noah on Sunday night in Valley, Neb., to report that his hand had been blown off by a powerful firecracker, fire officials told KETV. An emergency crew was able to recover Noah’s hand — 90 feet from where he had ignited the blast at a lakeside residential area around 7 p.m.

The explosion also injured Noah’s left eye, Valley Fire & Rescue Department Fire Chief Aaron Ueckert told the Omaha World-Herald.

“This was not a typical Fourth of July firework,” Ueckert said. Noah was awake and alert as a helicopter crew rushed him to Nebraska Medical Center.

A 42-year-old New York woman lost as many as two fingers while playing with fireworks early Monday morning on Brooklyn Avenue in Brooklyn’s East Flatbush neighborhood, police sources told the NY Daily News.

The accident happened just one day after what investigators described as a “homemade” explosive blew off the food of an 18-year-old Virginia man in Central Park.

[Image via Pixabay]

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