LEWISBERRY, Pa. (WHTM) – – It happened in a flash.
“I had my hands on my face and when I put my hands away, I could see the blood,” said Ray Coffey, Lewisberry resident.
A standard 4th of July celebration turned bloody.
“I was about 40 feet away from where it was. I wasn’t real close to it, and what happened was, it was a 2-inch mortar and it blew up in the tube,” Coffey said.
A bit of plastic tubing turned into shrapnel and lodged into Coffey’s eye.
“They have 3-inch, 4-inch, 6-inch, they go about as big as 8-inch, which is about the size of a cantaloupe, basically, so this was just one of your smaller mortars, but an explosion in a confined space in a tube like that, it doesn’t matter,” said Coffey.
He was in the hospital within the hour, but it was too late. He lost his eye and now has a prosthetic, although he still maintains movement in the muscle.
“Technology has come a long way. I’m a barber, you know, and most of the people don’t even know I have a prosthetic eye,” said Coffey.
You would think that his experiences have scarred him from celebrating the Fourth of July forever, but.
“I’m fine with them. I just don’t get too close to them,” said Coffey.
However, he does have serious recommendations. He believes simple protections could have saved his eye.
“I would recommend anyone that is even close to fireworks be wearing even like sunglasses, maybe not safety glasses, but some sort of eyewear,” said Coffey.
He also recommends staying away from alcohol while lighting fireworks and handing the reigns over to someone with experience.
“Let people that really kind of know what they’re doing do it, because just like anything, accidents do happen, but have fun on the Fourth of July. That’s what it’s all about,” said Coffey.
No one was drinking at the time of Ray’s accident, and no neighbor was at fault. He says when you mess with explosives, sometimes things can go awry, although he’s very grateful to his doctors and says plenty of people have it a lot worse.
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