A dad's leg 'exploded' when he was hit by a firework at a party.
Johnpaul Garvie was rushed to hospital with serious injuries following the terrifying incident at the Hogmanay do in Paisley.
The 40-year-old says he was enjoying a great night with friends, and decided to mark the start of 2023 by letting off a few fireworks on green space in the Foxbar area of the town, the Paisley Daily Express reports.
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But the celebration turned sour when a stray pyrotechnic hit him directly in the leg.
He explained: "The first one went up fine but the second one shot directly towards me. "I tried to get out of the road of it but it hit me in my leg and stuck there and exploded. It blew my joggers and my boxers to pieces.
"I tried to get it off with my hand, it burnt my hand a bit, but it wasn't coming off then it exploded - it was one of the scariest things I've ever experienced. I'm a lucky, lucky, lucky boy."
An ambulance was called and Johnpaul was rushed to the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley where an emergency operation was conducted on his injured leg. He later had skin taken from his left thigh and grafted onto the injury to replace was destroyed by the firework.
Johnpaul's experience has left him with permanent damage to his leg and he has had to walk with the aid of crutches since the accident.
And it has changed his outlook on the use of fireworks for the general public and believes the sale of them should be banned and that only official displays should be allowed.
He said: "I want to get the message out there for anybody else that's going to use fireworks to think twice - because of the dangers that they can cause, which I did not think they could. You look at my leg and it tells you everything basically.
"Make sure you go to a display. It should be illegal to buy them from the shop. I've had my leg damaged but, at the end of the day, it could be a life that's lost."
The Scottish Government introduced a new law last October making it a criminal offence to supply fireworks to under-18s in an attempt to reduce the damage caused by them. However, Johnpaul says that anybody could become the victim of a wayward firework.
He said: "If you buy them online, they don't require any proof that you're over 18, so anybody could buy them. And anyway, this was a freak accident.
"There were no kids, it was all adults, and it still happened. It doesn't matter if you're an adult or a kid or a pensioner or anything else - it's going to happen."
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