MANSFIELD, MASS. (WHDH) - A man was seriously injured Friday afternoon after setting off a firework near the Mansfield MBTA station, officials said.
The man was standing about 1,000 feet from the station when he attempted to ignite a single, consumer-grade firework, according to the Mansfield Police Department. After lighting the fuse, the man returned to the firework, picked it up and it exploded in his hand.
Mansfield resident James Brophy says he was eating lunch on his front porch when heard a loud boom about 1:30 p.m.
“All of a sudden I heard an explosion,” he said. “A really loud explosion.”
The man, identified as a 38-year-old Blackstone resident, then ran to the station and sought help from passengers who were awaiting trains.
A nearby parking officer rushed over to the man and applied a tourniquet to his left arm to stop the bleeding, officials said. He was taken to a Rhode Island hospital with a serious, but non-life-threatening hand injury.
“He said ‘my god I’m going to die, it burns,'” Brophy said of the victim. “It took his fingers off.”
Mansfield fire officials are crediting the parking attendant with saving the man’s life.
“The credit here goes to the Mansfield parking officer, who tied an improvised tourniquet against him,” Deputy Chief Jim Puleo said.
A bomb-sniffing dog was called to the scene as a precaution following the blast and the area was cleared.
An investigation is ongoing.
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