God damn! Never become a Senior Patrol Leader in Boy Scouts, it fucking sucks, especially at camp. It ruined an otherwise great week, which is (possibly) my last going to Boy Scout summer camp.
Well, it was a great week except for this.
He was staff at the camp I just came back from, and the timing of all of it was horrible. The accident happened around 10:30 - 11:00 PM on the first day of camp for me, Sunday. I remember because it was after taps, and the adult leaders were going to bed when we saw a helicopter pass overhead.
As it turns out (and the newspaper got wrong, probably because of the camp not wanting to look bad), 3 boys decided to make a ring of fire out of rubbing alcohol around a boy (whom I had talked to that day and was friendly with) who was asleep in a chair. When it looked like the fire hadn't started, one of the boys put more on. But it was burning with a low clear flame, and when the alcohol hit, it jumped up the bottle. The kid who was pouring it obviously freaked out and sprayed the kid in the chair and Shaun with the alcohol, which caught them on fire. Shaun's twin tried to put out both of the kids, but only burned on his fingers. The boy who started it was fired on the spot while the others were taken to the hospital.
The kid in the chair suffered 2nd degree burns to his legs, while the extent of Shaun's injuries are unknown to me. Shaun died, in a sad twist of irony, on Family Night and Troop Skit Night at the camp, the latter being the only thing that I knew the Whitleys from; the skits that they did on the opening night of camp.
Really, it was a prank gone wrong. In all honesty, I would have gone along with it, if I didn't know it was going to end so horrible. Camp next year, if I end up going, won't be the same.