Chem-class horror student testifies in civil trial
Alonzo Yanes remembers every excruciating detail of the chemistry class fireball that his own mother said left him looking like “Frankenstein.”
He remembered the “immense heat” enveloping him and surreal moments in the hallway of Beacon High School, wondering if he was dreaming as he endured “incomparable” pain. And he remembered the apologies of his hapless teacher, Anna Poole, who said “I’m so stupid, I’m so stupid” after causing the chemical reaction that changed his life.
Making his first appearance in Manhattan Supreme Court as part of his parents’ $27 million lawsuit against the city, the badly burned 21-yearold described the botched “rainbow experiment” demonstration in 2014 involving methanol and mineral salts.
“I felt this immense heat wrap around my entire head and wrap around all my arms and hands. I remember smelling methanol everywhere,” Yanes said, occasionally tugging at the loose skin on his neck and touching his deformed ears.
“I was still burning, I was still on fire … I remember feeling the fire eat away at my skin, eat away at my flesh. It was charring me the same way that a piece of meat chars in a frying pan.”
He rolled around the classroom floor. He remembered hearing screaming classmates, his own cries for help and his sizzling skin.
“It felt like an eternity, like forever. I couldn’t do anything, I was hopelessly burning alive and I couldn’t put myself out and the pain was so unbearable, it felt like forever,” he testified
“This was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my entire life. Nothing’s even comparable — it was unreal.”
After Poole and another teacher put out the fire using a blanket and fire extinguisher, Yanes said he stumbled into the hallway, gasping for air.
“Is this happening? Is this some kind of intense dream I’m not waking up from?” he recalled asking himself.
He quickly realized he was awake. “This is way too real, this pain is way too real,” Yanes testified. “There was heat everywhere and nothing made it go away.” He was 16 at the time.
Four days later, Yanes awoke from a medically induced coma. Two months of agonizing skin graft procedures and treatment had already begun. He had cadaver skin stapled to his neck. His ears were destroyed. And he was restrained for five days at a time in a crucifix position to keep the grafts in place. Doctors used his healthy skin to apply grafts to over 30% of his body.
“I felt hopeless that all this had to be done just to heal me, to turn me back to normal. I felt like I kept losing more and more of me,” he said.
His mom refused to let him look in a mirror, but he managed a glance during a trip to the bathroom.
“It was out of a horror movie—something that’s not supposed to be there was looking back at me,” he said.
In earlier testimony, Yanes’ mother, Yvonne, described the ordeal in similar nightmarish terms.
“I remember seeing this huge body and it didn’t look human,” Yvonne said. “It just looked like an alien form moving and flailing around … I didn’t recognize him.”
She was not permitted to kiss, hug, or touch her son while he was in the hospital. She didn’t allow Alonzo’s sister, who was 7, to visit the burn unit.
When his hospital stay was coming to an end, the mom prepared the girl to meet her brother. She described Alonzo to her as looking like “a monster, Frankenstein, patched up a lot.”
Once Yanes was out of the burn ward he became socially isolated, Yvonne said. People stared at his compression suit, including a mask, which helped ensure skin grafts bonded to his body.
“It’s hard coming up with encouragements,” Yvonne said. “The future is grim for him.”