December 19, 2007
Moultrie -- It was at this quiet Moultrie home on Hutchinson Drive where a barrel marked flammable exploded with kids nearby.
"I seen it jump real high, the barrel. It jumped up real high," said Patricia Wright Jordan.
But Jordan will never forget what happened next.
She said, "I opened up the door and walked to the door, and then I heard the loud boom. Then I heard one of the kids say they had threw a match inside the barrel."
Jordan lives across the street from the house on 1413 Hutchinson Drive where police say 4 kids were playing on the carport when one of them struck a match and tossed it into a barrel full of tire cleaning fumes.
"The kids flew every which way. So I knew that something had to have went down real bad," said Jordan.
"The barrel had previously contained some kind of flammable liquid. We are not sure of that yet, but I believe that it was marked as tire shine," said Lt. Alfonzo Cook with the Moultrie Police Dept.
It was in a 55 gallon blue tin barrel clearly marked flammable liquid, that a 13-year-old boy threw a match into Tuesday afternoon sparking an explosion which sent a 9-year-old girl and a 12-year-old girl to the hospital. Now that 13-year-old is facing charges.
"So far we've gone with reckless conduct and criminal damage to property," said Cook.
9-year-old Shayla Snipes and her 12-year-old sister Emily were airlifted to the burn center in Augusta with their injuries. But police say the whole situation could have been avoided by following one simple rule, never play with matches.
"Just because the barrel was empty, some of the fumes were still in the barrel and that's what caught fire," said Cook.
A spokesperson with the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta said that Shayla and Emily Snipes were discharged Wednesday afternoon.
The 13-year-old juvenile was released into the custody of his parents.
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