A Miami-Dade man who was set on fire at a gas station Christmas night remains in critical condition at Jackson Memorial Hospital Thursday morning, hospital spokesman Edwin O’Dell told The Miami Herald.
Miami-Dade police did not have any new updates into the investigation of why Darrell Brackett, 44, was set on fire at the U-Gas station at 4700 NW 27th Ave.
Brackett’s mother Bridgett Brackett said that relatives hope to distribute flyers this afternoon at the gas station to help police search for tips. She had not received any updates from the hospital or police early Thursday morning.
Police “are out there canvassing the neighborhood -- going door to door trying to see if anybody saw anything,” Brackett said.
On Christmas night, Brackett and his girlfriend had a cookout at their home in Miami-Dade county, his mother said. Then, they took their guests home and after dropping them off, Brackett and his girlfriend ran out of gas near Northwest 49th Street and 23rd Avenue. Brackett walked to the U-Gas where he paid for gas and walked over to the pump.
The events that then unfolded were not clear to police Wednesday except that they got calls about a man on fire running in the street. Bridgett Brackett said a woman who spotted her son rushed to help him and got him to roll on the ground in the dirt of the median, which extinguished the flames. Brackett’s mother said her son told her he had asked some men a question and said to his rescuer repeatedly “They didn’t have to do this to me.”
Bridgett said that when she saw her son the first night he was admitted to the hospital “he was moving around, moving his head, he was trying to open his eyes. I told him I was there.” On Wednesday he was in “excruciating pain” so the doctors put him in a medically-induced coma so they could change his bandages.
“I talked to him yesterday,” she said Thursday. “He could hear but didn’t respond.”
He has third-degree burns over 75 percent of his body and no skin on much of his body -- he was wearing cut-off jeans which saved the skin on his thighs, she said.
Bridgett said that a doctor told her it will be a long recovery.
“He is going to have to have a lot of surgeries,” she said. “He has no skin left on his body to do a skin graph. They are going to have to find an alternative way of doing a skin graph. ... The first three days is a critical time for him right now. .... After three days or so we will see what the prognosis is going to be long term and short term.”
Darrell Brackett works for his girlfriend’s uncle’s lawn service as the uncle’s “right hand man” as a gardener and driver, his mother said. A fun-loving man, he grew up in Liberty City and graduated from Miami Northwestern High School.
On the surface, Bridgett appears calm though she says she is grieving on the inside.
“God has spoken to me and told me to leave it in his hands,” she said. “I have a certain peace about me now. When I am by myself I cry. I have to be strong. There were times last night I cried and I prayed. ... I know God can work miracles.”
Detectives ask anyone with information to call Miami-Dade County Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.
Miami Herald news partner WFOR-CBS4 contributed to this report.
