Boys refused sunscreen in child care suffer third-degree burns
Two young boys have been hospitalised with severe sunburns after child care employees called them 'babies' for wanting to put on sunscreen.
The boys, aged five and seven years old, suffered second and third degree burns after spending the day at a water park during temperatures that reached 47.7 degrees Celcius.
The boys' mother Shaunna Broadway said her sons were in tears from pain when she picked them up from child care on Friday in Vinita, US.
WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES BELOW
“I dropped them off at Happiness Is a Learning Center at 9am, and that day they were going to Splash Pad, a local water park,” Ms Broadway told Buzzfeed.
“I got off work at 5pm and went to pick them up, and they were clearly burned.
"[The employees] were actually making fun of my older son, because both boys got sunburns but he was being a ‘baby’ and crying about it,” she said.
The local weather advice for the public was not to spend the entire day outdoors, Ms Broadway said.
When Ms Broadway took her boys to the hospital, the doctors said they wasn't much they could do until the burns blistered.
“They told us to go to the pharmacy, where we got Silvadene cream and pain meds, but nothing seemed to help. They were in pain all night," she said.
When the burns started to form large, painful blisters, doctors lanced the boils on their backs, applied cream, and gave the boys medicine to help with the intense pain.
“The boys kept screaming and crying all day. My oldest one’s chest started hurting and he said he was having trouble breathing," she said.
Her fair-skinned children have been to multiple hospitals since the incident, and the family has filed a report with the local police department.
Ms Broadway is in the process of finding an attorney while authorities investigate the incident.
Local Officer Bobby Floyd said authorities are looking at videos from the courthouse to see how long kids were left outside.
The boys have been pulled from the day care.
