A 15-year-old student has had their hand blown off after picking up a stun grenade being used by police as mass school protests continue across France, local authorities said.
The incident comes as nearly 500 schools are expected to be completely or partially closed following student protests across the country over dilapidated schools and classrooms, overcrowding and teacher shortages preceding a nationwide day of demonstrations on Tuesday.
Most of the patients I’ve had who became upper limb amputees from explosives had a closed hand around the explosive when it happened. You can hold something like a fire cracker in an open palm and walk away with mild burns. However, if you were holding the same firecracker in a closed fist I would be fitting you with a prosthetic in a few weeks.
Now I’m not sure exactly how much energy a stun grenade goes off with, but usually if the limb is irreparably damaged without also causing other bodily trauma, the patient was probably holding the device when it went off.
I can attest that because I blew myself up with a pistol flare in 2025 (long and stupid story). My left hand at the moment of the explosion was half-stretched out and the charge blew up a few centimeters below my hand. Only superficial burns to the hand and permanent hearing damage.
If I had the charge in a closed fist, it would have easily torn a hole through my hand. And that was just 2 grams NEC. A stun grenade is much more powerful than a pistol flare (my completely random guess: 20g NEC equivalent), so I reckon that eviscerating the entire hand is not out of the question.
It doesn’t take much depending on the hand position when it goes off. We usually get about 2-3 people blowing up their hands in the trauma ward every year at the hospital during the 4th of July.