Age 5 Girl Burned Over 60% of Her Body After Setting Herself on Fire
Don’t touch the stove. Don’t put things in outlets. Don’t run with scissors.
These are all things that kids are warned not to do at some point. Another common one is “don’t play with matches.” Unsupervised kids and fire just do not mix.
It was the day before Thanksgiving when one family from Indianapolis, Indiana, experienced a horror that most of us will never face.
Amanda Robinson and Brian Bray were mortified when they got a call informing them that their 5-year-old daughter, Lillie, had accidentally set herself on fire.
After swiping an abandoned Zippo from the kitchen, Lillie had headed upstairs to her room. She started setting toothpicks on fire, and dropped one onto her dress.
Her uncle was home, and he was the one who saw her and smothered the fire with a blanket. Still, Lillie had sustained third- and fourth-degree burns on over 70% of her small body.
“I was not aware she had the Zippo lighter at all, I yelled to her that I was going to pick up her dad — her uncle was downstairs,” Robinson later said, according to The Sun.
“Then while doing some shopping we got a call from my brother saying, she accidentally set herself on fire and that he had to put her out. She was in her room, she had toothpicks and apparently she tried to light it on fire, when it did her clothes caught fire too.”
Lillie was put into a medically induced coma so doctors could begin the painful and painstaking treatment. Though she will likely be going through many more skin grafts, she has already endured eight surgeries.
She has been wrapped from head to toe in bandages, and changing them is difficult and understandably causes her a lot of distress. She’s found a way to push through the pain, though: Singing along with Elsa while the nurses change her wraps.
“It makes me very proud seeing the video but also sad to see her like that, especially with everything we have been through so far,” said Robinson. “I was taking the video, so you couldn’t see my face, but I could not stop crying, it was amazing to see.”
Members of the family have set up a GoFundMe for the young girl to try to give her parents some financial wiggle room.
“The funds will be going to getting her comfortable clothing and pressure garments to help with her recovery, and so that I can stay at home to take care of her,” Robinson explained. “Doctors say you have an amazing little girl, but I already knew that.”
“I don’t think I could endure all the pain she is going through and for her to be able to make jokes, sing and make the effort to walk is amazing to me.”
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