Maimed by homemade fireworks, Hartford teen talks about explosion

Jan. 06--On a warm October day, 16-year-old Carlos Santana bent down to pick up some trash in Hartford after shooing away a curious 4 year old. The seemingly unremarkable act changed his life forever.

As he stepped back with the ball of foil in his hand, he heard a thunderous boom, felt searing pain and temporarily lost his hearing and sight. Homemade fireworks had exploded in his hands, tearing off one finger and nearly ripping off a second, which ultimately had to be removed.

Almost three months later, the Bulkeley High School junior is healing after painful surgeries to rebuild what's left of the hand. While his left thumb, ring finger and pinky heal, he is working with a tutor to finish high school and is rethinking his plans for the future.

Carlos lives with his family on Wayland Street in the South End. His mother, Tanisha Gabriele, and stepfather, Genesis Talib, both have disabilities that keep them from working, so Carlos does what he can to help out. His duties include carrying groceries, keeping an eye on his two younger siblings and scooping cat litter, all with one hand.

"He is very selfless," said his mother, Tanisha Gabriele. "He doesn't really think about exactly what happened or how it's affecting him. He's just living his day to day, like a trouper, a soldier to me."

Gabriele and Carlos' stepfather, Genesis Talib, want the person who left the foil ball to know what damage they've done.

Police have not found the person responsible. They hope to find him or her through any DNA that may be on what little is left of the item, which was made of household ingredients and was about the size of a golf ball. The remnants are at the state forensic lab, police said.

In an age when recipes for bombs can be found on the internet in minutes, homemade fireworks are not considered unusual, said Hartford police Lt. Paul Cicero. But the 18-year police veteran said he never heard of someone losing a limb to them in the capital city.

Investigators don't believe the item was left intentionally, he said.

"I don't think [there] was any ill will," Cicero said.

Some members of Carlos' family disagree. There were illegal fireworks in the neighborhood two days before the blast. People living nearby, including in homes next to the yard where the foil ball was found, had called police to complain about them.

"They may have decided to get back somehow," Gabriele said of the person or people who left the ball, which she said appeared to be positioned under a rear tire of a parked car.

The blast

The blast happened on an unusually warm Sunday afternoon, Oct. 7, when Carlos went with his father to visit a friend on Gray Street on the west side of the city. His dad, also named Carlos Santana, worked on a car in front of the house while young Carlos hung out with the friend's children in the back.

"I was just there chilling with her kids. I decided to take them outside so they don't have to worry about having to watch 'em," Carlos said in an interview with the Courant. The three boys range in age from 4 to 12.

The 4-year-old, named Mikey, pointed to something under a car behind the house.

"It was just like a ball of aluminum foil," Carlos said. "He really wanted to pick it up. He usually loves throwing stuff. So I was like, 'No, I'll pick it up so I can throw it away.' I'm thinking it's a piece of garbage, maybe it fell off the truck or something.

"And then, right when I picked it up, I took a couple of steps, and it just [went] boom," Carlos said. "It just blew. I ended up losing my vision very quick, for a couple of seconds. My hand was hurting like really badly. It blew off, my shirt, basically. ... Everything from my neck down.

"When it blew, all I seen was straight white. I couldn't see nothing. And my ears were ringing really badly. And when I got my vision back I tried to look for the kids. I was like, 'Are they OK?' "

"And then I looked at my hand and I seen it and I was like, 'Oh man.' I didn't want to think about it."

He tried to fix the mess, he said.

"I tried putting my hand back together, because when I looked, my thumb was just dangling and stuff and I tried holding it. I basically just held my hand up so I can get a full picture of it."

He started running to the front of the house as his father rushed to the back. Smoke hung in the air, and car alarms blared, triggered by the blast.

Santana wrapped his son's hand in his hooded sweatshirt and the two got into a car with another friend behind the wheel. The man drove them to the hospital.

What was left of Carlos' shirt was on fire, Gabriele said.

When Carlos arrived at the hospital, he was scared and confused. He couldn't hear well and he struggled to breathe. He was afraid he would die if he fell asleep, so despite six or seven shots of morphine, he fought to stay awake, he said.

"I kept trying to fight it because it really was hard for me to breathe. It was hard for me to hear, so I was sitting there paranoid. I was mainly scared that I wasn't going to make it, thinking if I went to sleep, maybe they wouldn't get to me in time. I've got to stay up. I've got to make sure I'm still breathing."

Mutilation

When Dr. Nicholas Bontempo first saw Carlos' left hand, he thought he'd have to amputate it, he said. In addition to taking off the index finger and nearly severing the middle finger, the blast had caused burns and multiple fractures, and moved muscles.

"When I first saw his hand, I didn't think anything was salvageable. You have to see what's there. There were parts that were missing, parts that were broken, parts that weren't where they were supposed to be."

"Going into this surgery, I thought I was going to have to amputate at his wrist. I was able to salvage his ring finger and his small finger. He had lost the index finger in the explosion and the middle finger was extremely damaged and not salvageable."

Bontempo inserted pins to support the remaining three fingers so they could heal, he said.

In addition to the injuries to his left hand, Carlos' right hand was burned, as was his face, chest and belly.

"He had basically the blast injury to his entire chest," Bontempo said. His left eardrum was ruptured.

Despite that, Carlos said his ears seem to be working fine.

"I'm surprised that I can still hear," Bontempo said.

After a week in the Connecticut Children's Medical Center, Carlos was able to go home. For the first few days, a visiting nurse came to his apartment and changed the dressings on his burned right hand, chest and belly. They couldn't touch the left hand, which had to be left to heal, Gabriele said. It had 200 stitches.

The healing process has been taking a while. As Carlos' three left fingers started to heal, he felt pain as some of the pins popped out of his fingertips. On Dec. 6, Bontempo removed one of three pins in his thumb, the doctor said.

While Carlos was under anesthesia, Bontempo also straightened out the index finger and pinky, which had curled because their joints had frozen from lack of use.

"Fortunately for him, the three fingers did survive, and nothing became infected. He's still in the process of healing," Bontempo said. "I am optimistic that Carlos will be able to use his hand."

Bontempo, who described Carlos as a reserved and polite teen, said the 16 year old's action that day likely saved a life.

If the 4-year-old boy had picked up the item, he said, "It probably would have killed him."

A life saved, a life altered

While his left hand continues healing, Carlos -- who, luckily, is right-handed -- does what he can with his right. A diabetic, he checks his blood sugar level and injects his own insulin with one hand, Gabriele said. He helps out around the house by carrying groceries. He scoops the kitty litter, setting up the bag with his right hand, the least damaged one, and a foot, she said.

One of the many things Carlos couldn't do in the beginning is text the friends he had sent messages to every day. He eventually could text with one finger on his right hand, his pinky.

"I just decided to text them, and let them know what happened. I used to text them every single day. They just thought I just wanted to spend some time by myself."

"When I let them know, they thought it was a prank," Carlos said. "But then I sent the pictures of me laying in the bed. Then they was noticing that it was real. They were really in shock, and they felt really bad."

His friends aren't the only sympathetic ones. Even total strangers have been kind.

Talib, Carlos' stepfather, said he has talked to fellow veterans who have seen similar blasts during the Vietnam War.

"It brought them back to the war," he said. They told Talib to "make sure [Carlos] knows that he's a hero."

Carlos received more good wishes when the mother of a friend took his family out to eat at Dakota Steakhouse in Rocky Hill. He unwittingly attracted attention as he struggled to eat ribs with his one working hand, which remained bandaged. People came over and asked what had happened.

A woman he had never met before paid for dessert and shook "hands" -- the only thing available was his right pinky and ring finger. She said she would pray for him.

And an IT manager gave him his business card and told him to call him if he needs help with a job search.

Carlos had dreamed of buying properties, fixing them up and reselling them. But since he doesn't know if he'll be able to do manual labor, he is thinking about going into real estate, he said.

That a stranger would help him find a job despite his disability "feels really good," Carlos said. "It feels amazing. I'm not grateful that this happened, but I'm grateful that I have more opportunities than if it didn't happen."

He and his family have been buoyed by such acts of kindness, which includes Christmas gifts donated through the Hartford Police Athletic League. Still, they raised only a fraction, $5,580 as of Jan. 4, of the $50,000 they were hoping to raise through a GoFundMe page, Hope for Carlos.

GoFundMe page, Hope for Carlos

While insurance pays for many medical bills, it doesn't pay for things like transportation to and from medical appointments, Gabriele said. The family needs money to fix their '92 Buick, which keeps breaking down. Carlos also needs a better mattress and even things as simple as a hair wash and cut.

Even though Carlos is expected to regain use of his remaining three fingers, Gabriele wants an advanced prosthetic for her son. Carlos' insurance would pay for a basic one, something Talib compared to "a generic mannequin hand." But they would like him to have something better, something that allows for more movement.

"If there's enough nerve left, he'd have full use of fingers," Gabriele said. "And I believe he deserves that."

'Just stop'

Carlos shows no sign of anger about what happened to him. He said he hopes the person or people who left the foil behind to not do it again.

"The only thing I can ask is for them to completely stop that because it's not good. It's not healthy. I don't know what the purpose of doing it was. It feels like for fun or something. But don't. Just stop. Just, just stop."

"Even though this happened to me, it's no point trying to solve this with more violence."

His mother has stronger feelings.

"I'll tell you what, don't let me get to them first," Gabriele said. "I want to say, if you are man enough or woman enough to make this thing, you should be man enough or woman enough to come forward, because you see the damage that it done to somebody, and it could have took his life, it could have took the life of that 4-year-old if they picked it up."

"Even if it wasn't meant specifically for this person, you still need to own up," she said. "Because it's dangerous, and he should not have to live the rest of his life not knowing why this happened."

Anyone with information about the homemade fireworks that injured Carlos Santana is asked to call the Hartford Police Department anonymous tip line, 860-722-8477 (TIPS) or the routine line at 860-757-4000.

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