South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Living with scars
His classmates set him on fire a decade ago, but survivor won’t let past consume him
Michael Brewer held his baby girl in his arms. More than anyone else, she helps him to forget the pain he once felt, the pain he almost always feels, from a horror that nearly claimed his life 10 years ago. Her tiny hands reached for his beard and tugged. He laughed.
“I just look at her and I don’t think of any of that stuff,” he said. “It’s a wonderful feeling. She’s what keeps me going.”
In fall 2009, Brewer’s was a household name, not only in South Florida, but across the country. He was the survivor, a 15-year-old Deerfield Beach Middle School student who was set on fire by a group of schoolmates in the parking lot of an apartment complex near his home. Fundraisers were dedicated to covering his medical expenses.
With second- and third-degree burns covering two-thirds of his body, Brewer’s survival at the time was far from certain. National news programs competed for exclusive interviews with his parents and, eventually, with him.
The boy who was engulfed in flames emerged with scars inside and out, but he emerged alive, and that was more than most on Oct. 12, 2009, expected.
“I remember running across the field on fire. I remember jumping into the pool. I remember all of it.” Michael Brewer, who was set on fire by a group of classmates 10 years ago
“I do know how lucky I am,” he said.
It would be easy to let the burns, scars and constant pain consume him, Brewer said. But he can’t let that happen. His daughter, Espyn, is counting on him.
Brewer’s 25th birthday falls on Oct. 11. His family was gathering this weekend at his grandmother’s home in Loxahatchee to celebrate the milestone, where they’ll also commemorate the 10th anniversary of his emergence from the flames.
Dressed in a tank top and shorts in his family’s home, Brewer recently spoke to the South Florida Sun Sentinel for his first lengthy interview in years. There’s too much to say — and too many people to thank — for the survivor to remain silent.
He did nothing to hide the evidence of what happened, lifting his shirt, pointing to the burn marks, the places on the side of his torso where doctors grafted cadaver skin to keep him alive.
There are tattoos now where he once could not be touched for fear of aggravating the pain.
One, on his right arm, reads, “God never promised days without pain, laughter without sorrow, sun without rain, but He did promise strength for the day, comfort for the pain and light for the way.”
The ‘debt’
Brewer says he remembers everything about that day. “I remember running across the field on fire. I remember jumping into the pool. I remember all of it.”
All of it, apparently, started with a disputed debt. Before Oct. 12, 2009, Brewer was a less-than-stellar student — still in middle school at age 15, with a gaggle of friends in the same boat.
Days earlier, he said, a young man roughly his age tried to sell him a marijuana pipe. Brewer didn’t want to buy it. The alleged seller, Matthew “Zeke” Bent, insisted, demanding $40, according to Brewer. He would not take no for an answer.
On the Sunday Brewer turned 15, Zeke showed up demanding payment. Brewer refused, so Zeke tried to take a bicycle belonging to Brewer’s father, a custom-made vehicle worth $700. It was a gift from Brewer’s mother, Valerie, to his father, also named Mike. Police were called. Zeke was arrested. As a juvenile, he was quickly cleared for release.
The next day, Zeke and some mutual friends crossed paths with Brewer in the parking lot of the Lime Tree Village apartments, midway between Brewer’s home and their school. A mutual friend, Denver “DC” Jarvis, poured a bottle of rubbing alcohol on Brewer. Another young man, Jesus Mendez, taunted Brewer with a lighter.
The alcohol ignited. The other teenagers scattered.
“I knew there was a pool,” Brewer said. “I ran to it. I couldn’t think of anything else.”
Brewer jumped in. The decision saved his life.
With second- and third-degree burns over two-thirds of his body, he was flown to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. The 911 calls captured the pleas of the first people who tried to help him, as well as the anguished screams of the boy who had no idea whether he would live to see another day.
Before Brewer made it to Miami, the crime against him was already a local media sensation, Within hours, it was national — local teenagers arrested, accused of setting a schoolmate on fire, and no one knew why.
A rumor spread that the debt was over a video game. Even Brewer laughs that off today. “Did people really believe that?”
It was Brewer himself who put the rumors to rest in 2012, during Bent’s attempted murder trial.
It was a marijuana bowl, he said.
There was no video game.
Accountability
“It was everybody’s worst nightmare, that something like that could happen to a child of yours,” said Assistant Broward State Attorney Maria Schneider, who decided to charge Bent, Jarvis and Mendez as adults with attempted murder. “This was so random, so quick, so spontaneous in a sense, it was mind-boggling. But the horror of the effect was something no one could ignore. Who’s responsible and who’s not?”
Mendez and Jarvis pleaded no contest in February 2012 to charges of attempted murder. Jarvis now 25, was sentenced to eight years in prison and was released in August 2016. Mendez, now 25, was sentenced to 11 years in prison and released in January.
Bent took his case to trial and was convicted of aggravated battery. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison and released in August.
Efforts to reach the defendants were unsuccessful.
As for the Brewers, Schneider said she was impressed by their strength as a family.
“I have come across families that were a lot more vengeful,” she said. “At the end of the day, the Brewers were not. They wanted consequences, but they weren’t vengeful. And they had reason to be a lot angrier than they were.”
The survivor
Brewer was hospitalized for nearly three months. He was released on Christmas Eve 2009. Public donations of more than $250,000 gave his family the means to leave Deerfield Beach.
“We had so much support from so many people, there’s really no way to thank them all,” said his grandmother, Reenie Brewer, who lives with him in Loxahatchee.
“It gave me a chance to start over,” Brewer said, admitting he has not been an angel in the decade since the burning. There were multiple drug arrests, for which he served a year of probation from 2013 to 2014. “I’ve made some mistakes,” he said. “I’m not happy about that. Honestly, I think I was trying to hide the pain.”
He’s on probation again, this time for a drunken driving arrest last year.
About three years ago a mutual friend introduced him to Jennifer Goodwin, who lived nearby but knew nothing of his history.
“He took his shirt off in front of me [to show her the scars] when we first met to see my reaction,” she said. “He was surprised how I didn’t react like most people do. … I constantly tell him how beautiful of a person he is. That his scars don’t define him.”
Goodwin and Brewer welcomed their daughter, Espyn, in June. The name came from a movie character who, in turn, was named after the sports network ESPN. Brewer never graduated from high school, but he has held several jobs — as a security guard, a landscaper and, currently, delivering hay to farms throughout Palm Beach County.
While he’s been back to Deerfield Beach a few times, usually for family parties at Quiet Waters Park, Brewer said he avoids the old neighborhood.
He brought Goodwin there once last year.
As they drove past Lime Tree Apartments, Brewer said he considered getting out.
But he didn’t stop the car.
They drove away, keeping the burning in the past.