A high school football player is happy to have his sight after suffering chemical burns during practice. The chemicals were inside some barrels being used on the West Carroll High School football field last Friday.
"I could feel the liquid, I thought it was water at first, then it started burning." It was the last day of football camp and incoming freshman Eric Lashelle was excited to be on the team. But a half hour into practice, everything changed.
"Coach asked for 8 barrels to be put on the field, a whole bunch of us ran over and I picked up the one that spilled on my face," said Lashelle.
The West Carroll High School football coach had been using the barrels to work out spacing on the football field. Those barrels mimicking dummies, so the players could run through plays. But the barrels came from a local factory and, at one time, they had been filled with dangerous chemicals.
Chemicals that spilled onto Lashelle's face and into his eyes.
"I couldn't see," he said. His father, Jeff Lashelle, got the call letting him know his son was injured on the football field --
"My first impression was broken arm, broken leg," he said. "But they said he got burnt by some chemicals and I'm like, what?"
Eric flushed his eye with the water usually used for the players to cool off, but this was an emergency -- "I had burnt tissue off of my eye and on my face some. Then it scabbed up and most of the scabs fell off already." And it could have been worse. Doctors tell the Lashelles, if Eric hadn't been wearing contacts at the time of the accident, he could have lost his sight.
Eric should make a full recovery but the question remains -- why were the barrels on the field if they were so dangerous?
"They just should have been handled properly, a little better than what they were, and rinsed and flushed better," said Jeff Lashelle.
Still, the Lashelle family believes school officials did the best they could in an emergency situation and there are no hard feelings.
"I like to play football, so I want to get back out there," Eric said.
"I'm ready to watch him," said his father.
Although school officials are calling it a freak accident, the barrels have since been removed from the football field, they will not be used again. The West Carroll District Superintendent says the barrels had been used on other days, during previous practices. But the chemical burn injury that took place during Friday's practice was the first.
