A six-year-old girl in Topeka, Kansas is in for a long recovery after someone reportedly set her on fire in her own backyard.
On Wednesday, George Hearne was getting ready for work when his five-year-old nephew, Christopher Beddo, ran inside to tell him that his sister, Jayden, was on fire. Hearne rushed outside and found Jayden’s head “engulfed in flames.” He put them out and performed first aid until first responders arrived. Jayden was rushed to the burn center at the University of Kansas Hospital with second- and third-degree burns on her head and first- and second-degree burns on her hands. According to KCTV in Kansas City, Jayden was wearing an oil-based hair product that fueled the inferno.
Dhaval Bhavsar, a plastic surgeon at KU, says that Jayden will likely need reconstructive surgery and possibly some skin grafts. Even after that, Bhavsar says there will be some scarring. He and his team will have a better idea over how much treatment she’ll need in the next week. Doctors told Hearne that they don’t know if the hair that was burned off will ever grow back, and that the scars on top of her head will be permanent. She’s expected to spend at least two more weeks in the hospital. However, so far doctors say she is doing very well. Hearne has started a drive to help pay Jayden’s medical expenses at GoFundMe; donate here.
KU Hospital put together a video of Jayden to show how she’s doing. Watch here:
According to Jayden and Christopher, a middle-aged white man wearing wearing a green shirt, green shorts and a red and blue hat walked up out of nowhere and used a lit cigarette to set Jayden on fire. Police found a lighter at the scene, and believe it was a random attack. Police say that while they’re actively pursuing leads, they aren’t seeking any people of interest at this point. Needless to say, Christopher has found it hard to talk about it. Hearne says that Christopher either avoids it or gets “really worked up” whenever anyone asks him about the incident.
A number of commenters online have speculated that Christopher and Jayden were playing around and it went horribly wrong. That seems very unlikely. It’s more likely that there’s a psycho on the loose in eastern Kansas–one that needs off the streets yesterday. Regardless of what happened, here’s hoping Jayden makes it through this okay. She’s probably going to be traumatized by this for a long, long time.
