An autistic Texas teen is facing permanent blindness after someone he called a friend allegedly hurled cleaning powder in his eyes.
“Kids with autism don’t always know how to make good friend choices,” Amy Morgan, the victim’s mother, told ABC 13.
Her son Brody, 18, was walking with two other friends through their Houston suburb neighborhood last week when their horseplaying turned violent, police allege.
The trio frantically returned to her house with her screaming son, whose eyes were clearly injured — but the boys tried to hide what exactly substance was burning Brody’s eyes, leading Amy Morgan to suspect it was salt.
She tried to flush his eyes with saline and water, but nothing worked, and it wasn’t until she rushed him to the hospital that she got the full story.
According to police, one of the boys had stolen a package from a nearby home during their walk and ripped into it, finding a “container filled with a powder substance.”
That’s when 17-year-old Branden Jolly allegedly opened the bottle and tossed the contents onto Morgan’s shirt.
Morgan shoved Jolly aside, prompting the teenager to toss the contents again — this time in Morgan’s face, according to court documents.
Morgan was rushed to the local hospital’s burn unit and was treated for chemical burns to his face and eyes, police said.
Doctors would later discover that the chemical in Brody’s eyes was a drain de-clogger — which was clearly described on the outside of the container, records obtained by ABC 13 show.
Jolly — described by police as “one of [Morgan’s] friends” — was arrested two days later and hit with felony charges for injuring a disabled person.
The teenager’s mother told the outlet that she believed the whole incident was an accident and that the chemicals fell out of her son’s hands after Brody “attacked him.”
“Our family is very distraught over the details of this case, for both of our families. I’m very saddened by the entire event, and heart goes out to Brody and his family. I believe this incident was NOT an act of malicious intent by my son to harm his friend but an accident resulting from the choices made by all parties involved,” Jolly’s family said in a statement.
Morgan’s path to recovery is unclear — his injuries are described as severe and unpredictable.
“The kind of chemicals they were can still continue to break down,” Amy Morgan said
