CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – On Dec. 3, Kayla Dubeck and her family stopped by the MAPCO gas station on Tiny Town Road and bought some drinks. Dubeck approached the counter to pay, and both of her children were standing next her, looking at a display stand of merchandise stocked with candy, phone chargers, toys and flashlights.
As Dubeck would soon find out, there were also butane lighters – some of them designed to look like dragons.
Suddenly, there was a yell of pain from her 10-year-old son. “Ow! Mom, Mom, Mom!” he yelled. Her son had his hands clamped over his face.
“I asked him what happened, and he said, ‘I don’t know! It hurts, it hurts!'” Dubeck told Clarksville Now. When he moved his hands, Dubeck was startled to see a path of singed hair up the side of his face, his eyebrow and eyelashes were singed, and he had a burning blister on his nose and cheek.
“I went, ‘Oh my God, you burned yourself! What? How did you burn yourself?'” Dubeck recalled. It took five minutes of splashing cold water on his face in the gas station bathroom before her son calmed down enough to point out what he had been looking at.
Among the stand of toys, pens, lighters and candy there was a box of “Dragons Breath” butane torches. The mother recognized them for what they were, but her son had not.
“He thought it was another toy, and had pressed the trigger without picking it up,” Dubeck said, “and immediately received a 6-inch-long blue flame igniting in his face.”
Normally, these lighters and torches come with a red safety cap, plus a safety lock, but it appeared that an earlier customer had removed the safety cap and unlocked it to test the torch before putting it back.
A photo of the lighter shows a label that says the flame reaches 2,300 degrees, and states, “Warning: Keep away from children.” An Amazon listing for the product promotes it as “the most powerful flame lighter on the market,” capable of cooking meat or soldering wire.
“He got incredibly lucky, since only a few inches different could have cost him his eye. He has second-degree burns across his nose and cheek, and lost the majority of his eyelashes, but he will heal,” Dubeck said. “My concern is that the gas station has put the same box of lighters back out on the shelf within the reach of small children since he burned himself.”
She said she asked the store to take down the torches and move them somewhere safer. But since the incident, Dubeck said, every time she’s stopped at Tiny Town Road MAPCO, the torches were in the same spot. As of last week, Dubeck said, they were still there.
Clarksville Now reached out to MAPCO’s corporate office, who responded, “We take guest safety seriously. We are aware of this incident and are reviewing relevant procedures.”
Clarksville Now also reached out to the MAPCO store on Tiny Town Road. A person answering the phone said things were being handled internally and declined further comment.