A Beacon School student lost an ear and “looked like a victim from a battlefield” after being badly burned during his teacher’s botched science experiment, a city probe revealed Thursday.
Alonzo Yanes, 16 when the accident happened, was engulfed by flames during the Jan. 2 demonstration by teacher Anna Poole, according to the Special Commissioner of Investigation.
Custodian Dimitri Stefanopoulos, teachers Thomas Covotsos and Guyyee Shum and nurse Connie McKillnon were the first school employees to rush to Beacon’s third-floor science lab to tend to the injured student, investigators found.
“Stefanopoulos described the student’s left ear as being melted,” according to the report. “Stefanopoulos said that the student `looked like a victim from a
battlefield.’ ”
Yanes and Poole declined to be interviewed by commission investigators.
Other students told the commission that Poole was distraught.
“Some students heard Poole say, `I burned a student’ or `Oh my God, I set a kid on fire,’ ” according to the report.
Poole had been running the “rainbow experiment,” according to the report, placing various nitrates and methanol in four petri dishes and lighting them to create for four different colors of flame.
“When one dish started to go out, Poole took a gallon jug of methanol to add to the dish,” the report stated.
“As she did so, there was no explosion, but flames — a fireball — erupted and shot toward Student A who caught on fire. Student A started to yell: `Help me.’”
Flames spread to a table and some of the students’ jackets.
“Shum saw Student A on the floor rolling around trying to extinguish the flames on his clothing,” according to the report.
“Student A’s shoulder and neck were also on fire, as were a table and some jackets.”
Yanes suffered second- and third-degree burns to his face, neck and torso. Another student, a 16-year-old girl, suffered minor injuries.