The city of Los Angeles literally popped off after the Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees to clinch the team's eighth World Series title in franchise history last week. In the ensuing pandemonium, a Metro bus was set on fire and exploded and one fan was seen blowing off part of his hand while lighting fireworks in a viral video.
The video in question has since been viewed nearly 150,000 times, and now that fan is speaking out with the hope of warning others. And all things considered, Kevin King, 25, is lucky that two fingers are all he lost in the incident.
Fox 11 Los Angeles spoke with King and his family and said that even his surgeons agreed that it was a miracle that the damage wasn't much, much worse.
"The surgeon did see the video," King's father, also named Kevin King, explained. "They don't understand how he was able to walk away with the injuries that he that he has. He protected 90 percent of his face from the explosion."
"He’s basically missing his pointing finger," King Sr. noted, referencing his middle finger. "The meat portion between the pointing finger and the thumb area. He did have some issues between both his ears."
King has already had two surgeries to repair the damage and is about to undergo his third procedure. According to a GoFundMe page that was created to raise money for his medical bills, he'll eventually require prosthetics and was also left hard of hearing due to the blast. King plans to raise awareness about firework danger so that hopefully someone else won't have to go through the same ordeal.
"He knows obviously, he made a pretty bad mistake of deciding to light a firework, not knowing where it came from," King Sr. added. "And then at the same time, it's like he's already like, ‘What can I do to make this positive?'"
