Old Harbour boy suffers second-degree burns after friends set him ablaze

The boy who is a student of a corporate area high school in St Catherine had to be rushed to the Spanish Town Hospital where he spent five days undergoing treatment.

The incident occurred in a community in Old Harbour where the boy and his friends were lyming. However, what apparently was intended to be an innocuous and playful gest quickly escalated into a near life and death situation for them.

According to the mother of the teenager, her son told her that his friends, both 17 years old, threw rum on him before lighting him afire a few minutes later.

Persons present rushed to aid the screaming child but he had suffered severe burns to his entire back and parts of his ears before the fire was extinguished.

The matter is also now the centre of a police probe led by detectives assigned to the Old Harbour Police Station after a formal complaint was lodged. The police have advised Old Harbour News that one of the accused boys has been charged with assault causing grievous bodily harm while the other ran away and is being sought by investigators. The identities of the boys involved cannot be made public under the law because they classified as minors.

Despite the peace offering of an apology from the parents of the boys accused, the victim’s mother said she's seeking legal advice on how to proceed with the matter.

The incensed mother of three said she finds it very difficult to accept the incident that took place on April 9 was just a playful act that went horribly wrong.

"My son told me he wasn't playing," she said in a rather distressed tone, before claiming "that was no game".

"That was deliberately done," she argued much to her annoyance of the thought that that wasn't the intention of his friends.

"They are old enough to know that rum is flammable," she said. "So how you a go throw rum on somebody and then light them? That mean you deliberately do that."

The accused boys, she admitted, are indeed friends of her son who he hangs out with a lot playing sports like football in the evenings.

Her son, she said, has to be taken daily to the nearby government clinic or a private doctor to treat his wounds. This is already costing the mother, who also has a two year-old daughter to look after, a financial burden that is becoming more burdensome each day, notwithstanding the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

"He has to go to the doctor every day. They recommend that it clean every day. The clinic doesn't clean every day. It's $4,000 to clean it and me never know that a so it dear," she laments to Old Harbour News, while highlighting  other associated costs such as  prescribed painkillers and antibiotics.

Doctors are yet to determine a timeline for her son's recovery at the moment, she said, but she's already anticipating a lengthy stay in the treatment room as her boy has what Jamaicans refer to as 'keloid skin' a condition in which scar tissues tend to overgrow forming lumps that vary in sizes.

At the same time she's "hoping and praying" that that doesn't happen, as he recovers.

So far, she said, her son, who has aspirations of becoming an electrician in his adult life, doesn't appear yet to be suffering from the traumatic experience.

But it is evident that the physical torture he's had to endure since that infamous night is affecting her just as much.

"Sleep? Mi no sleep," she said of the period her son was hospitalized. "A last night mi get little sleep when him come home, a so mi could a able fi sleep."

She continued: "Parents try talk to me but sorry alone can't help… what if mi child did dead? Weh yu wooda tell me? 'Sorry!' And if it was the other way around where it was my child who did the same thing, any pressure mi come under mi just affi tek it.

"Them have sense. Them know exactly what they were doing. And fi se you and mi child a friend - a that part even hurt me more - how you have the heart to throw rum on your friend and light your friend! A that mi don't understand. It’s not like unu did have a problem before or did a fight and you can say a ignorance tek over and things happen, nobody naa think before them do anything. But in a case like this mi can't understand it. It a puzzle me up until now."