The car says, “Owww.”
Longmont, CO - Stevie Marchand, 18, and two 16-year-old girls were sitting in Stevie’s stepbrother’s car on Thursday afternoon. They weren’t bothering anybody, just minding their own business, huffing the fumes off two cans of aerosol – one mango-pineapple, one strawberry-raspberry. One of the girls got a little high and decided it was a good time to light up a cigarette.  That’s where the BOOM! comes in.
None of the teenagers attends high school. Which is pretty obvious, since I think they cover “flame + flammable gas = ignition” in science class. The fumes from the aerosol cans had crept into the ventilation system of the car, and when the gas cloud ignited, it blew out the entire dash of the Toyota.   The force of the explosion was so powerful that it blew the car’s sunroof into a tree, took out the car windows, and made the sedan go “crunch”.
I don’t think Stevie Marchand’s stepbrother’s insurance is gonna cover that.
I think what we have here is called “epic fail”.  Horrid-smelling aerosol? Check. Cigarette lighter and smokes? Check. Nicer car than necessary? Check. High school dropouts? Also check. Wow. Burny skin, melted hair, lung damage and no brain cells? Sounds HAWT. Stevie’s Myspace is private, but she looked pretty enough before she blew up the car. I wonder if that’s her baby in the picture with her?
Marchand and the girl in the front seat got first-degree burns, and the 16 year old in the backseat got second-degree burns – the really painful kind. All three teens were taken to a Longmont hospital for treatment.
Two witnesses nearby had seen the girls and heard them listening to loud music for about an hour before the explosion. When the car went “boom”, the men thought they heard a cat screaming and ran to check. The “cat” was not a cat screaming at all, but the girl in the backseat, who was already crawling out a broken window.  The witnesses didn’t see a fire, but smelled a sweet, fruity scent before it was overpowered with the smell of burning hair.  Sounds delightful.
So far, nobody’s been charged, but I bet that a couple of girls are really, really grounded right now. Police say they are considering whether to file charges for illegal use of inhalants and may also charge Marchand with contributing to the deliquency of stupid minors.
If anyone knows who these wannabe Darwin winners are, hit an imp with a Myspace, willya? I’d love to see what their hair looks like now.
Thanks to The Morning Star in our forums, without whom I’d have had to make up a title.
Tags: car explosion, cigarette, Colorado, Darwin Awards, Huffing, Longmont, Stevie Marchand, teenage girls, Toyota
Drink the Kool-Aid