Two-Year-Old Boy Burned With Acid At Playground
Apr 15, 2007
(WJZ/AP) MIDDLE RIVER, Md. The playground at Victory Villa Elementary School should be covered with laughing children. Instead, it was crawling with a Hazmat team Saturday. Baltimore County Police say a two-year-old boy was going down a slide when something terrifying happened.
Peyton Duschl slid through a substance and started crying inconsolably. He was taken home, but water didn't help. He was then taken to the hospital.
At Franklin Square Hospital, doctors learned the boy was covered with sulfuric acid and suffering from third degree burns, mostly on his legs.
That's when things got even worse. Apparently acid on the boy dripped onto the floor. Patients and staff had to be moved out while fire crews cleaned the spill.
The boy was then taken to the pediatric burn unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Peyton Duschl was scheduled for surgery Sunday morning and likely will be hospitalized for several weeks, said Carol Duschl, the boy's mother.
Although Hazmat crews scoured the playground, for some parents, it's not enough.
"My kids aren't going to school on Monday, not until I get some kind of confirmation from the school that everything is fine," said William Rohe.
Rohe says this hits too close to home. His children play with Peyton.
"They're over there all the time; he's over here all the time," he said.
Police found empty bottles littering the playground. They say those bottles contained the acid and were stolen from inside the school.
Someone kicked in the door to a storage room at Victory Villa Elementary School sometime overnight, said Sgt. Vickie Warehime, a county police spokeswoman. Investigators found that six bottles of drain cleaner had been opened.
"This wasn't an accident, this wasn't just for fun. This was all over that playground. It was everywhere, and it was at a school. This person meant to do that. Why would you do that, knowing that a kid was going there to play," said Carol Duschl.
The person or persons responsible will face charges including first-degree assault, burglary and destruction of property,
"We're very lucky nobody else used that playground today," Warehime said. "We could have had numerous victims."
Whoever is responsible most likely suffered minor burns to the hands and arms, Warehime said. Anyone with information was asked to call police.