Boy suffers 3rd-degree burns after teacher put sanitiser on his hands and set it on fire in science experiment

The Texas middle school teacher resigned after the incident, police say

A teacher at Granbury Middle School in Granbury, Texas has resigned after a botched science experiment left a student with third-person burns, police say. (KDFW-TV/Screengrab)

A Texas middle school teacher has resigned after a botched science experiment they were conducting in the classroom led to one of the students getting badly burned, according to the Dallas Morning News.

The teacher, whose name has been withheld from the public, has since resigned and a criminal investigation has been opened. The 12-year-old boy’s hands had allegedly been covered in hand sanitiser and then lit on fire, according to Granbury police Lt Russell Grizzard, the Dallas Morning News reported.

The incident occurred on 31 March at ​​Granbury Middle School, the police said.

In an interview provided to KDFW-TV, Lt Grizzard told the outlet that the science experiment the teacher had been overseeing had allegedly been attempted without incident several times throughout the day on other students.

“They put the hand sanitiser in the students’ hands and lit it,” he explained in a televised interview with the local news station.

The premise, he explained, was to show how quickly the alcohol from the sanitiser would burn in the students’ hands once it came into contact with the open flame.

In a statement posted to the middle school’s Twitter on 1 April, the school noted that the student had been injured while attempting to “copy a demonstration shown in science class” and that he was receiving medical treatment at a nearby hospital.

Later in the week, the school again took to Twitter to post an update on the incident, noting that the teacher who had been involved in the science experiment gone awry had “resigned” and was “no longer an employee of the school district”.

“Campus officials have turned this matter over to law enforcement/proper authorities to further investigation,” the statement read.

The Independent reached out to the Granbury Police Department for comment and they said there was no update on the case at this time.

“There is a criminal investigation being conducted, and the case will be sent to the Hood County District Attorney’s Office for review to determine what, if any, charges will be filed,” Lt Grizzard told The Independent in an emailed statement.