A brave face
Bronx girl on mend from burns
THE 11-YEAR-OLD Bronx girl who suffered horrific burns on her face after a friend poured boiling water on her left the hospital Friday looking like her old self.
“I’m so great,” Jamoneisha (Jamoni) Merritt gushed to the Daily News.
Jamoni, after spending 11 days at Harlem Hospital, gobbled up a turkey and cheese sandwich upon returning home.
“Now I’m dancing and listening to music,” she said.
But Jamoni’s journey back to full health is not yet over.
The bubbly middle-schooler will likely miss the start of her seventh-grade classes and require home-schooling, her mother said.
“Her arm is still raw it hasn’t healed yet ... (and she) can’t go outside in the sun,” said Ebony Merritt.
“It’s going to take maybe about six months for all her color to come back in.”
Jamoni was sleeping over at a friend’s house Aug. 7 when a pal doused her with scalding water in a prank that went gruesomely wrong.
The incident resembled the “Hot Water Challenge,” a Youtube-inspired trend in which kids pour boiling water on unsuspecting friends.
Jamoni was nearly unrecognizable after suffering burns over 85% of her face.
Aniya Grant Stuart, 12, was taken into custody following the incident, sources said.
The case was immediately turned over to Family Court because Aniya is a minor.
Aniya was said to have sliced open her wrist in a failed suicide attempt following the incident.
Speaking out for the first time, Jamoni said Aniya and two other girls had warned her that she would be pranked if she fell asleep the night of the attack.
“I didn’t know what they was gonna do but I felt tired,” Jamoni recalled. “So after I was dancing I just sat on the couch and I fell asleep.”
She jolted awake feeling like her face was on fire. “I was screaming because it burned, it burned, it burned, it burned,” she said.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help the family cover ongoing medical costs.