Sequoia Leach’s Life Changing Firework Explosion

Hi my name is Melissa, I’m Sequoias Mom who you see here on the Fourth Of July 2021 1am PostOp of first surgeries. My Beautiful 19 Year old Suffered a Significant Blast Injuries to his Bilateral Hands, Face, Head, Chest: Major Multiple Trauma, Burns, Multiple Fractures, Brain injury, Multiple Degloving, Inhalation Burns, Entire hand Severely Mangled Soft Tissue Damage, loss of digits or parts, obliterated Thenar and Interphalangeal Muscles(your pad of thumb and little muscles between long bones in your hand that lets u spread your fingers).

I was encouraged by friends and family to make this fund to help Sequoia pay for ALLL the medical care he has had and will need as I myself and Disabled undergoing Chronic Care and Infusions and My Husband just was Fired after 26years of working for Starbucks 2 weeks prior to this Accident leaving Us and sequoia No Income.  and Basically Huge Bills that are starting to roll in.. Sequoia has A very Intense long road ahead of him and it will require many specialized equipment, splints, wound care, Specialized Hand Therapy and many other Specialists like Plastics surgery who are incredibly expensive! At the time I don’t care didn’t have choice charge or whatever just SAVE MY BOY! That’s all I could think.. Reality is coming and we/he (19yrs old)will need to attempt to pay for his care. He will continue to need Mental Therapy for his PTSD & Panic Attacks/Anxiety of which he has NEVER EXPERIENCED BEFORE! .. (He thought he was going to die again) that coupled with the PTSD: nightmaresthat jolt him awake right when he finally goes to sleep,  flashbacks, lability, hypersensitivity to loud noises, intolerance for long conversations Etc.. He will need Years of psychological therapy to deal and cope in a healthy manner with what happened..and of course our Entire Family: his two younger brothers QuinnBear & Chance , his Dad & myself. We All including his friends need basic healing & coping help as we are All going thru the stages of grief..of which is up and own right now.. The Mental part is HUGE and so far he has been amazingly positive! The Medical cost are & continue to be HUGE! With our recent loss of job well yes this is a big deal this fund .. We do everything we can but it will never be enough to pay for this life long ever changing life adaption.. Sequoia surprises me everyday and breaks the odds daily! I love you My Precious Beautiful Boy! And we will all adapt and overcome this and Educate others so it doesn’t happen to them! For many days and nights I questioned my faith and God hating on him but as time went along I realized God created us to be individual thinker making choices.. sequoia made his choice and then God Placed everyone he could and can in his path so he gets beat care and beat chances of survival and recovery! So thank you Lord for sparing my child’s life forgive my for doubting.. I stand before you and continue to beg pray for the best possible outcome for my boy! I told you I would take this for him if I could .. I asked him to take me instead.. but no and I’m beginning to see the miracles that have been performed and made and now I apologize for my hateful comments to you lord and now am beginning to see how much you were there! ❤️.... 

    We were encouraged to by everyone to do this fund as many are asking where they can help and donate Plus Sequoia and I wanted to share his story with everyone as it will hopefully provide Fireworks Awareness and help with the huge Mental, physical, and Financial Expenses resulting from his massive injuries. He will require years Mental, Hand Therapy, adaptive Equipment, Splints, just to name a few..! Here is full evening account the best I could get.. & I am including Danny’s account of what happened that Life changing night. Pls read its absolutely beautiful..

SEQUOIAS STORY: On The 4th of July My oldest son Sequoia went out with his friends and had been setting off fireworks awhile then there was one illegal one that one of his good friends had brought. It was end of them I hear and it was a round bomb with a short fuse. Sequoia lite the bomb shaped firework with his left hand and held in palm of his Right Dominant Hand. He said he lite it and tried to throw it but it exploded at about face level in his hands. He folded forward onto himself to ground ontop of hands..His friends ran to him and called 911 or sequoia actually told them to.. Sequoia amazingly enough was conscious and giving directions and telling paramedics his allergies or yelling them because he lost his hearing was deaf practically right worse than left and blind as blast was to face .. most extensively on Right side. Chris who immediately took off his shirt ran to sequoia and rolled him off of his hands onto his back and did tourniquet of his right wrist.. there was a lot of blood and skin and tissue everywhere.. Luckily he knew not to move hand as it was ONLY HELD TOGETHER BY bit of SKIN!! BUT, even in shock Chris knew what to do ( I later found out he had some EMT training) with the guidance of 911 and his friends support. Sequoia recalls he lite this firework confident he had time to throw it and BOOM! SEQUOIAS LIFE FOREVER CHANGED and he was fighting for his life!..911 arrived he was intubated immediately for inhalation burns and swelling of airway.. brought to Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs , closest trauma hospital.. His friends who are like my own kids and his brothers were in shock and scared didn’t know what to do or how to be able to tell me and my husband what happened.. unfortunately they waited and discussed not telling anyone for an hour then decided it would be best to tell in person so they drove to my house and to let us know .. Immediately seeing the three, not 4, standing there ghost white and when asked where sequoia was they could speak hardly .. I knew something was wrong and started to demand questions and gather my things to race a million miles an hour to try and see Sequoia before surgeries began but it was too late they took him immediately due to extreme severity of his injuries and to try and save his hands..I had to sit and wait for hours outside in the desert heat .... The boys who were with him came with me to ER , he was already in surgery so the wait began.. that horrible feeling I will NEVER FORGET! The questions I had the anger the fear the love the motherly I can’t make it better or fix it this time.. I can’t take it back for you.. I remained in shock holding it together the best I could not just for me but for the boys his friends who saved him.. We discussed or tried to the details of what happened.. Sequoia later told me that he just saw white and thought he was dead. He cried and his first words when he was extubated were “I’m sorry mom I’m sorry I’m so sorry I’m sorry” .. He then told me “All I could do is think of you mom and say I love you, I love you, I don’t say it enough , u kept me alive, all I could think is I’m not gonna spent another 4th with my mom.. then he told me that he thought he could move his right fingers so he thought hey I’m alive I’m going to fight and proceeded to yell as he was deaf and blind to Chris to tighten tourniquet tighter and tighter.. He was BLEEDING OUT!..These Boys were amazing! Even though they should have called me right after the 911 call.. I educated them explained why it’s so important to do.. these boys are like my own kids and are like brothers to Sequoia and were scared and in shock BUT pulled it together and did an amazing job and SAVED SEQUOIA LIFE!.. Chris,Danny & Wesley …I can never Thank you Boys enough for saving my Sequoias life! Our lives are forever changed and Sequoia has a long very very hard road ahead of him .. an expensive road.. He fought his life and survived by Gods Grace and the guardians that surrounded him that night. We are so very blessed and thankful for this! However Sequoia is incurring and will continue to have major bills due to the extensive nature of his injuries.. It will be a different way of life now and adaptation for not only him but his family and friends. Currently he has gone thru multiple surgeries to his hands in an attempt to save anything we can.. His left hand is not as affected But his Right dominant hand is one of the most extreme case this plastic surgeon has seen and he’s even a lot! Sequoias Injuries include but still evolving: a traumatic brain, hearing loss bilaterally, vision loss bilaterally injury due to blast shock force to head. These we hope will get better over time.. however possibly permanent, still waiting to find out how much he’s going to get back.. He suffered facial & chest burns, inhalation burns, & I’ll just list the Right hand because of the extent of damage to this hand. Basically it was only held together by skin ONLY. Right hand blast explosion injury surgeries are as follows:

Complete amputation right thumb at proximal phalanx. Complete amputation of right index finger at the DIP joint, ray amputation of the glove right finger long finger, complete amputation of right ring finger at PIP joint, debridement and washout of right hand with debridement of skin and subcutaneous tissue and muscle, closed reduction and percutaneous pinning of left index finger distal phalanx fracture, ORI F & KY or pinning of open displaced right thumb CMC joint.

Left Hand: degloving of thumb, Open fracture of the left index finger at the DIP joint, multiple abrasions of the left hand, pin placed in the DIP joint of the index finger.

Danny wrote this and it’s his account of that horrible night:

july 4th ,2021, 11:00 pm, the night our lives changed forever. let’s rewind an hour and a half prior to the life changing incident and we’re lighting up fireworks under the wash. the fireworks are ricocheting off the walls and everyone is laughing , having the time of their lives, while i’m pretending to be having a great time as well. when in reality, i was only thinking of everything that could go wrong. all through out the night they were eye balling what we called the “grand finale firework” which was essentially the illegal firework that had a fuse shorter than an average thumb. fast forwarding an hour later, i could feel sweat dripping down my back, not only because i was anxious, but because it was your typical 100 degree night at the coachella valley. the time had now come for the “grand finale firework” seqouia announced that he was gonna light the “grand finale” up in front of the elementary school. seqouia, westly, and chris started heading that way as i felt myself saunter behind. we had now arrived at the elementary school and it was time. 11:00 pm to be more precise. chris took a step back and wesley and i both ran for our lives as seqouia was about to light up the firework... and make the biggest mistake of his life... before i can even turn around and check if he lit it yet, BOOOOOOM my ears immediately began to ROAR as i heard a gernade like explosion, similar to those explosions i heard in all the call of duty games i played as a kid, except, this was real life. a few seconds later, after wesly and i regained our awareness, we sprinted to seqouia only to find chris kneeled next to seqouia and his lifeless body on the ground surrounded by a pool of blood. i thought i had lost one of my best friends. all the memories began to flash through my mind... all the LA trips, ditching class to go to mcdonald’s, jumping up in the air and high fiving each other, going to the skatepark every night, hitting dips way too hard with him in the back of my car... all that seemed to perish as i saw his lifeless body on the ground. i felt my soul find its way back into my frantic body as soon as i heard seqouia speak. seqouia told us to call an ambulance. without hesitation, wesley began to call 911, he was still in shock and unable to speak so i began to talk for him as chris took off his shirt, tying his wrist, to stop any sort of blood flow. we began to ask him questions to see if he was still conscious. he began to answer the questions, but after each one, we noticed he was slowly losing his conscious. 5 long minutes later, we were surrounded by red and blue lights. As soon as the emt got done asking us stupid questions, they took seqouia to get the medical care he needed. with the emt and fire department gone, so we’re the lights, which left us in complete darkness. at this point we should have called seqouias mom but wesley and i couldn’t speak for one and for two we also thought it would only be right if we should tell her in person WHICH IS SOMETHING YOU SHOULDNT DO IF SOMETHING LIKE THIS HAPPENS (i really REALLY hope it doesn’t but if it does ) CALL THEIR PARENTS IMMEDIATELY NO MATTER HOW HARD IT IS TO SAY OVER THE PHONE one of the first things i told chris and wesley after the emt and fire dept left, was that i wanted to die. i felt so distraught. i felt like it was my fault. i was worried sick about him and his family... i just wanted to wake up from this horrific night mare and jump up in the air and high five seqouia again... but i couldn’t... this was real life and we needed to inform seqouias family about what just happened. After we were done venting to each other we found ourselves at seqouias house. soullessly knocking on their door at 12 AM. i could see the confusion and concern on sequoias dad’s face (Rob) as soon as he peaked his head through the door. i felt as if i was mute.. i could never in a million years imagine how hard it is for someone to tell you your kids life is at stake. i felt like part of me died telling him the news.. and i felt even more dead hearing melissa (sequoias mom) screaming that her sons gonna lose her hand moments after hearing the news. Melissa packed the bare minimum in the blink of an eye and next thing you know we’re at the hospital. July 10th 2021, it’s a boisterous night in LA. a typical one to be completely honest. i’m in my room, typing away, and just so relieved that things are so much better than i thought they would be. i’ve visited seqouia at the hospital twice since the incident and i was there just yesterday, cracking jokes with him just like nothing ever happened. he’s just as positive as he always is and i don’t think anything will ever change that. no matter what happens. seqouia is special person and is bound to do great things. no matter what conflict he comes across ,nothing is ever gonna stop him from being that mellow, positive person that he always is. i know you’re reading this seqouia, i love you, i’m so happy you’re gonna be okay, and also, to anyone reading this, never take your loved ones for granted and never be afraid to say i love you because i can tell you from first hand experience... you never know what could happen. Thank you for taking time out of your day to read about my experience and never forget about the dangers of fire works. stay safe everyone and like i said before, cherish your loved ones!

Thank You Danny!! Sequoia wants to share to All it is SO touching! He cried and wants you and all his friends to know how much he loves and cares for you!!

I am still going thru or haven’t stopped since this awful day and am just now starting to deal with my emotions and how I was almost paralyzed dead inside about to pass out and throw up all at once .. all I could do and still flashback daily how helpless I feel and how I feel for him and I can’t fix it and it kills me inside.. BUT he has all the right people around him and he’s A Fighter!.. we are asking for any donations to assist Sequoias Recovery.. pls pass our Story around as it tell a lesson here as well.. Sequoia wants me to convey how much he loves ALL of you and is in awe of the love shown to him! He is so blessed and grateful we all are to have you all in our lives! Anything helps.. we would never do this if it wasn’t so needed. Thank in advance for your help!