2 children burned after acid poured onto slides at Massachusetts playground

Two children sustained “burn-like injuries” after acid was poured onto slides at a Massachusetts playground.

Police and firefighters responded to the playground in Longmeadow, about 5 miles outside Springfield, on Sunday morning after suspicious substances were found on the slides, the Longmeadow Fire Department said in a news release.

At the same time, EMS were called to a residence after two children returned from the playground with acid burns.

Ashley Thielen, the mother of the two children who were injured, told WGGB she noticed there was a pool of liquid on the slide but assumed it was water.

“And then my baby, who’s 1, just started crying. … So that was when I kind of knew that this liquid that they were around was not water,” she said.

Firefighters determined the material, which was poured onto three slides, to be “acidic in nature.” A hazmat team assessed the scene and ruled the chemical was muriatic acid, a diluted solution of hydrochloric acid used to disinfect and clean stains from concrete and brick, often in pools.

Additional investigating found that the chemical had been taken from the basement of the park’s pool building after the perpetrators broke into the pump room by climbing over fences and crawling through a ventilation shaft.

“We suspect that the perpetrators may have suffered acid burns to their hands or arms and their clothing may have indications of being degraded from contact with the acid,” the fire department said in the news release.

The playground was fenced off “out of an abundance of caution” until the area was properly cleaned, but the rest of the park remained open.

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