A Texas teenager was rushed to hospital with severe burns all over his body after a TikTok experiment went horribly wrong.
Twelve-year-old Caden Ballard and his older brother saw a video on the social media app which involved putting rubbing alcohol into a bottle and setting it on fire, making flames shoot up the bottle.
“My brother and I did that, and it was cool,” Caden told KXAN, recalling the incident on August 16. However, after the fire appeared to have gone out, his brother told him to dispose of the bottle.
“My brother grabbed and said, ‘Here, throw it away.’ So, I grabbed it to throw it in the trash can, [and] my shirt was on fire,” the youngster said.
Without knowing, the boys had used isopropyl alcohol for their experiment which, when ignited, can have an invisible flame. The resulting flames caused second-to-third-degree burns across 11 percent of Caden’s body.
The boys’ mom was on the other side of the house when the incident happened, and was told about the unfolding crisis by a friend who heard the boys call 911.
She recalled the horror of finding Caden on the porch.
“He was just face, chest, arms, stomach covered in burns. It looked like his skin had been melted away,” Christina Ballard told KXAN. “They like to listen to the story times on TikTok, you know, the Reddit stories. So I never expected things to go the way they went.”
She praised the actions of Caden’s brother, who had acted quickly – pulling off his brother’s shirt and telling him to stop, drop and roll, to put out the flames and minimize the damage.
“I don’t know how you were brave enough to reach into the flames and pull the shirt off of your brother. But I thank God every single day that you were brave enough to do that,” Ballard said.
Caden was rushed to a burns unit in Dallas, and is being transferred to a children’s burn unit in Galveston. He has already undergone surgery and now faces weeks of intensive care, recovery, and therapy, a GoFundMe page set up on behalf of his family said.
“Caden is a strong and determined young man, but this journey will be long and painful,” the page read.
“His parents are faithfully by his side, but the emotional weight is compounded by financial strain — extended hospital stays, time away from work, travel back and forth to Dallas, and bills piling up at home,” it added.
The page has already raised almost $1,500.
Christina Ballard is now urging parents to talk to their kids about the dangers of recreating online stunts. “We got very lucky; unfortunately, it’s bad, but Caden and I are very lucky that it wasn’t a lot worse,” she said.
