HIGHLANDS, NJ — With childhood drownings, heat stroke and other accidents, there’s a reason the months of June, July and August are known as “danger season” to ER doctors across New Jersey.
But Keyport resident Kelsey Gilgannon never could have prepared for what happened to her 4-year-old son last Tuesday afternoon: The boy was playing on the beach at Sandy Hook when he stepped on hot coals someone illegally dumped on the sand. The burns were so serious he was flown to the Burn Center at Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center, and is still unable to walk as of today.
“It’s just unbelievable, really,” said Gilgannon, 29, who grew up in Hazlet. “You don’t ever expect this to happen, especially to your own child.”
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The morning of Tuesday, Aug. 13 started out “with a feeling in my gut something was going to go wrong,” said Gilgannon. She missed breakfast and her phone was barely charged as she rushed out the door to her job in Ocean Township as a teacher for special-needs children. No matter: At least her son, a 4-year-old boy and her only child, would have a nice day on the beach at Sandy Hook with his grandmother, Gilgannon’s mother.
“They had been on the beach for a few hours when it happened,” said Gilgannon. “It was on the bayside. My son was with his two older cousins, 10 and 9. They love looking for sea glass on the rocks by the bay and they were walking around the rocks. I guess the people who were there had left, and they had dumped hot BBQ coals by some larger rocks. And they didn’t cover it or put water on it — nothing. My son happened to step on the hot coals. He just screamed. My nephew picked him up and immediately ran him into the water. Someone else on the beach saw what happened and called 911.”
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This happened near Guardian Park, which happens to be the only area on Sandy Hook where visitors are allowed to BBQ. Gilgannon said she was told the coals were dumped by two women, who then left the area.
“At around 2:45 p.m. Gateway National Recreation Area dispatch center received a call for a juvenile burn victim at Sandy Hook in the area of Guardian Park,” confirmed Daphne Yun, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service, which runs Sandy Hook. “Sandy Hook law enforcement rangers and EMS units responded and located a juvenile male with burns to both feet. Witnesses stated that the juvenile had stepped on hot coals that had been illegally dumped between rocks in the area.”
Gilgannon said her mother called her at work and she will “never forget my son screaming in the background. It sounded like someone was being murdered.”
The burns were so severe that instead of being taken to Monmouth Medical Center as originally planned, the boy was airlifted by helicopter to the Burn Center at Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston. Gilgannon left work and raced up the Parkway to meet her son. EMS crews gave her son fentanyl and two injections of morphine to numb the pain, recalled his mother, who said her son was “extremely medicated and out of it.”
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The boy did not have to be admitted overnight to the burn hospital. But doctors warned his mother that it would not be an easy recovery.
“He has second-degree burns on both feet. They said his right foot would improve in about one week, but his left foot was really, really bad. He initially stepped down with his left foot. Doctors said it would be four weeks before it was healed.”
“My son can only crawl now,” she shares. “He cannot walk. He is working with a physical therapist, but whenever he tries to put pressure on his left foot, he screams and cries in pain. It is like having a newborn again: I have to pick him up out of bed, I have to pick him up and carry him up the stairs to our apartment. He wakes up in the middle of the night screaming in pain. No blankets can touch his feet, nothing. It is horrible.”
Her goes back to see the burn doctors (they were last there Tuesday) and Gilgannon said when the nurses change the bandages on his foot “he screams in pain. Thank God they do it. I had to leave the room multiple times; I cannot witness it.”
She also noted: “He starts preschool in a week and a half and I have to think about, will he need accommodations for school? Do I have to call the school district? Who do I call? I don’t even know if he can go to school if he can’t walk. I am a single mother and it has been just … very, very difficult.”
While Guardian Park is the only part of Sandy Hook where people can grill, there are signs telling people they can only dispose of coals in designated locations, said Yun.
Gilgannon just wants to make other New Jersey families aware so they and their children can avoid such a nightmare. She contacted Patch specifically to spread awareness of what happened to her child.
“It’s frustrating,” she said Thursday, starting to cry. “Just follow the rules. The rules are there for a reason so things like this don’t happen. I don’t know how many signs they have, but something needs to be done.”
Gilgannon also said she rarely sees park rangers at Sandy Hook.
“We go to Ideal Beach in Middletown and there are always two police officers patrolling up and down the beach. I never see any (police officers/rangers) at Sandy Hook. There needs to be more supervision to hold people accountable.”
Gilgannon’s son’s left foot, with second-degree burns:
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