A seven-year-old girl has lost an eye after a suspected vape battery exploded.
Ruby Grainger was walking across a field near her home in Fortunestown, Tallaght, Ireland, on Oct. 5 when something exploded from a nearby fire and hit her right eye, her mother Ciara Grainger said.
‘Next thing I know, she’s running back home screaming. I couldn’t believe it. There was battery acid in her eye,” Ms Grainger told the newspaper Irish independentadding that blood was streaming down her daughter’s face when she got home.
A family member checked the scene of the fire after Ruby was hit and reportedly found the remains of several burned-out vapes.
Mrs Grainger, 32, said: ‘Whether it was a vapor or not I’m still not sure, but something exploded in the fire. It hit her right in the face and she has been in pain ever since.
Ruby Grainger (pictured) was walking across a field near her home in Fortunestown, Tallaght, Ireland, on October 5 when something exploded from a nearby fire, hitting her right eye.
‘She just collapsed crying, her eye was already swollen and I knew something was terribly wrong. We immediately took her to the hospital.’
The little girl was rushed to a hospital and shortly afterwards underwent emergency surgery on her eyes. Heartbreakingly, after the operation – which had a 50 per cent success rate – her family were told that Ruby had lost her eye.
“It was very devastating for Ruby as she is very self-conscious about children her age bullying her,” Ms Grainger wrote on a fundraising page she set up for her daughter’s medical costs.
‘Ruby now has to have a prosthetic eye, which will be difficult for a seven-year-old to get used to. Ruby will have to go through some very big life changes for a child her age,” the devastated mother said.
She added: ‘Ruby will have to change schools because (after) losing her right eye she will have to go to a low vision school.
‘Ruby will never be able to play like she used to and has to learn to balance again because she has a blind side.’
Little Ruby, a “smart and positive child,” has had nightmares “every night” since the incident, her mother said.
Ms Grainger also said fires like the one on the day Ruby was hit are set near her home ‘almost every day’, making the estate ‘sometimes look like a war zone’ – but she claims that despite reports to the Gardai and the community, nothing has been done.