At least two people, both toddlers, were injured after playing on slides at a Massachusetts playground that had been doused with acid.
On Sunday, Ashley Thielen of Longmeadow, Massachusetts, just south of Springfield, walked to Bliss Park with her three children, ages 5, 2, and 1. They ventured there to enjoy a day at Wilson Boundless Playground, but their morning of fun quickly ended after her 1-year-old son began crying inconsolably without obvious explanation.
“He was crying, and I couldn’t get him to stop,” Thielen said in a phone interview with the Boston Globe on Tuesday. “I was just trying to console him, and it was really weird that he would not calm down.”
Soon afterward, Thielen’s 2-year-old daughter, who had been playing on one of the slides at the playground, started screaming as well. “Mommy, it hurts, it hurts,” the girl said at the time. When Thielen went over to the slide to examine what was wrong, she discovered that what she thought had been a puddle of rainwater at the bottom of the slide was actually something else.
“I went to smell the liquid, and it just burned my eyes and nose,” Thielen recalled. “And so that was when I realized that it was not water.”
Thielen then took her children home and washed them before calling police. Thielen’s hands were burned, and her daughter’s thighs started blistering. Her son also experienced a “burn like” injury, though the details of his injury have not been given. Some of their clothing also disintegrated as a result of the incident. EMTs treated the family, and police continued to check on them throughout the day on Sunday and into Monday.
The Longmeadow Fire Department confirmed in a statement that its team had received a report of “two children with burn like injuries after leaving” Bliss Park as well as a report about “a suspicious substance” at the park’s playground. Investigators — which included Longmeadow firefighters, the Massachusetts Department of Fire Service Hazardous Material Response Team, Mass State Police Crime Lab Team, District Attorney’s office, and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection — determined that the “suspicious” liquid was actually muriatic acid, a diluted solution of hydrochloric acid frequently used in swimming pools.
Bliss Park also has a swimming pool, and authorities believe that the chemical had been stolen from the park’s pool building. In fact, evidence suggests that “a great deal of effort was employed” to grab the acid, the LFD statement said. According to the LFD, suspects climbed two fences and tore off a ventilator shaft to access the pump room in the basement of the pool building, where the acid had been stored properly.
Stealing the chemical and pouring it freely was so risky that fire officials believe that the suspects may have suffered “acid burns to their hands or arms and their clothing may have indications of being degraded” as a result of the incident.
The LFD statement made repeated references to multiple “perpetrators,” and WWLP-TV reported that two people are believed to have been involved. No suspects have been identified though, and police are still gathering evidence, including fingerprints.
In the meantime, a “specialty contractor” has been hired to clean the three slides affected in the incident. Though Wilson Boundless Playground remains closed “out of an abundance of caution,” other areas of Bliss Park are open to the public. Officials will make a decision about reopening the playground after all cleaning processes have been complete.
“It’s concerning to realize that somebody intentionally did this,” Thielen said. “I really do hope that somebody can be caught.”
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