Teen Was Handed an E-Cig. Then a Boom, and Blindness

A New York teenager has learned an anti-vaping lesson in the most painful of ways: An e-cigarette exploded in his face. Leor Domatov, 14, took a bus to the Kings Plaza mall in Brooklyn with friends last week and stopped at a vaping kiosk near the mall's entrance, where a clerk allowed the minor to handle products, reports the New York Daily News. But when the Plaza Vapes kiosk clerk connected the wrong battery to a vaporizer cartridge, it exploded—partially blinding the young teen as it pierced his corneas in both eyes and burned his hands, leaving a "large gash" in one of them, as the Daily News puts it.

The eighth-grader tells the paper that he can't see out of his left eye and has a "little bit" of vision in his right. "The duty falls on Kings Plaza and the kiosk owner to make sure there are signs in place to warn the children," the family's attorney tells Pix11. It's illegal in New York state for kids under 18 to buy e-cigarettes; New York City is even stricter, with the ban extending to anyone under 21. (Here's why vaping is illegal on US flights.)