Dodgers Fan Lost Two Fingers From Fireworks Accident, & Surgeons Say It’s A Miracle It Wasn’t Far Worse

Yet another reminder to be very, very careful when you're handling fireworks. Unfortunately for a 25-year-old Los Angeles Dodgers fan named Kevin King, he had to have that lesson reinforced in devastating fashion. King was just trying to celebrate his team's World Series win by lighting off fireworks. In fact, there were a lot of those relatively innocuous expressions of joy across LA once the Dodgers closed out the Yankees in New York. https://twitter.com/JoshuaMellin/status/1851835847802494989?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1851835847802494989%7Ctwgr%5E81e47cb98fef96e5dc61168515b06cb0de70dfc6%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.whiskeyriff.com%2F2024%2F10%2F31%2Fdodgers-fan-fireworks%2F Only in King's case, he was in the middle of a public street, almost certainly intoxicated to some degree, and got a little too callous with how he lit off his fireworks. That led to the grisly video below. Here's your warning to not click on it if you're squeamish. https://twitter.com/streetpeoplebh/status/1852190834768126072 Now we have an update on how King's recovery is going, thanks to his father Kevin King Sr., who spoke to FOX 11 Los Angeles about the tragic accident. The younger King is slated for a third surgery to treat injuries from the fireworks mishap. He's lost two fingers on his left hand, but surgeons agreed that it's a "miracle" that he wasn't worse off. "He’s basically missing his pointing finger...The meat portion between the pointing finger and the thumb area. He did have some issues between both his ears. [...] The surgeon did see the video. They don't understand how he was able to walk away with the injuries that he that he has. He protected 90% of his face from the explosion." https://twitter.com/FOXLA/status/1853759198799990847 Kevin's dad praised him for his mindset and how he's already trying to spin this into a positive by volunteering to raise awareness about the dangers of fireworks. Having covered the initial story, I've made it clear that I don't mess with fireworks. Like cool if somebody else wants to light them off. I ain't getting near those things. I'll reiterate my own self-deprecating point: Maybe that makes me soft. I just feel like ever since I covered Jason Pierre-Paul's Fourth of July fireworks accident back in the day, that sealed my decision never to light them. Furthermore, have y'all ever seen this? https://twitter.com/brutalfightz2/status/1702037958554173764 No thank you! I'm good! OK all humor aside, I hope that if none of the medley of horrifying fireworks videos out there, or incidents reported, are enough to dissuade people from igniting them in such a casual, dangerous manner, perhaps the case of Kevin King will mark a turning point. Hard not to deeply empathize with the guy. He's 25 years old. I was a raging moron at that age. Still do feel like the village idiot in certain life scenarios, but maybe I'm ever so slightly better off about a decade further down the road. King just permanently altered the course of his life for the worse in one bad sequence of mere seconds. Yeah, there's the silver lining about raising awareness to prevent similar things from happening to others in the future. King will have to make peace with that. It's a good sign he already seems to be on the path to doing so. May also be some consolation that King didn't suffer greater injuries, which to reiterate, surgeons thought was a miraculous outcome. Judging from the video, indeed it was. Shout out to the EMTs and medical professionals who got King the care he needed. Their work and grace under pressure will never cease to amaze me. May he have the best and speediest of recoveries.