A 6-year-old boy in Connecticut has been left with severe burn injuries and bandages after an attack by a young neighbor, his family said. The boy, Dominick Krankall, was playing in his backyard on Sunday when the incident took place.
The boy was rushed to the burn unit at Bridgeport Hospital Sunday afternoon, following what his family described as an ambush by a neighbor that could’ve killed him.
The attacker, an eight-year-old boy, poured gasoline on a tennis ball, lit it on fire, and threw it at the boy’s face after luring him.
“As soon as he walked down the stairs, the bully called his name and lured him over around the corner, and in a matter of seconds he came back around the corner screaming, saying ‘Mommy, they lit me on fire,'” the victim’s sister Kayla Deegan told NBC News.
Deegan was furious that her brother was attacked.
“(The assailant) has a history of bullying, and he has gotten away with too much. The mother thinks he is innocent. The family thinks it’s a joke,” Deegan wrote. “Even though Dominick can’t talk because he’s in a lot of pain and all swollen, he said to my mom, ‘Please don’t take me back there.’ This is extremely unfair and shouldn’t ever happen to ANY CHILD!!! We need justice for our little Dominick.”
The young victim is expected to recover, according to hospital officials. Though family wrote on GoFundMe that he’ll be “scarred for life mentally and physically.”
“All he ever wanted to do was ride his bike, play basketball, and go fishing. Now he has to lay in bed for MONTHS until he’s even able to walk outside again,” his sister added in the comment section of the GoFundMe post. “It breaks my heart over and over again.”
The family told NBC New York the assault wasn’t the first time his alleged attacker had bullied him.
“Two months ago under the bully’s mother’s supervision, he was pushed into a wall and fell to the floor. And again, the mother refuses to admit her kid did it,” Deegan said.
Police and fire investigation teams are investigating the case, but no charges have been filed so far, NBC New York reported. The outlet also reported that Krankall’s family is hoping to raise money to help pay for his hospital expenses and to hopefully move to a new, safer area.
“He’s a strong boy though, he’s coping,” Krankall’s mother, Maria Rua told ABC. “For what he’s going through, watching him have to get those bandages off and his face scraped is painful for him and it’s painful for me to watch that and it’s not fair to him.”
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