CENTERVILLE, Utah — On Saturday in the small town of Centerville, a Fourth of July celebration was in full swing until a firework exploded in the middle of the crowd.
“I felt a bunch of sparks like come across my legs. I was wearing shorts, and I'm like, 'Holy cow!'” said Brandon Phelps. “People running different directions. I saw a few people holding their kids’ hands, and a little girl crying.”
Phelps was attending Centerville Freedom Fest at Centerville Community Park with his wife and kids.
Just before 10 p.m., Phelps was waiting for his sons at the bathrooms when he saw something.
“I saw a firework come over my shoulder and it bounced on the ground,” he said.
Phelps said he looked up and saw a Centerville Police officer.
“He was like, 'Are you serious?' Like he was yelling at somebody over there, and then he went to stomp it out. And as soon as soon as he went to stomp it out, it just exploded like a huge fireball of sparks,” Phelps said.
WATCH: Centerville Police share footage of firework exploding in crowd
“A portion of it hit him in his left calf, which caused some deep bruising and burning, melted through his pants and caused a second-degree burn on his leg,” said Lt. Will Barnes with the Centerville Police Department.
Phelps said his family was so close that they felt the aftermath.
“My one son, he had just come out of the bathroom right before it exploded too, so he ended up getting that like concussion feeling, and he had some burn marks on his pants. And then my other son in front of me, he's my 12-year-old, he couldn't hear out of his left ear for about five to 10 minutes,” he said.
Barnes said no one besides the officer had any major injuries.
“We had some other bystanders get hit with debris. We had a juvenile female with a mark on the side of her face, but nothing serious,” he said.
Barnes said they were able to find and arrest two juveniles, but the motive is still unclear.
“They're looking right at him, and then the firework lands right in front of him. So, there's definitely that question about whether they saw a uniformed officer and threw it right at him or if it just landed there,” Barnes said.
Phelps said he feels the responsibility falls on parents to teach their children about firework safety.
“Parents need to do a better job of just telling their kids, this is not a toy. You can't just throw this into a crowd. It's not like a little, tiny explosion that's going to go off. This is going to injure people because it's very, very big,” Phelps said.
Centerville Police are still asking for information from the public to help with the investigation.
