UNILADDog walkers out for an evening stroll got a nasty surprise when they were ambushed by two rockets strapped together which were set off in the residential area by two suspected imbeciles.
Now, if I learned anything from The Lord of the Rings, it’s not to play with fireworks if you’re a fool – and definitely, definitely not to set them off if they’re not firmly stuck upright in the ground pointing up to the sky before they inevitably explode in a fiery mass of sparks and crackles, which are only pretty from far away.
Unfortunately, someone didn’t get the memo, and this happened:
The practice, as you might already know, of setting off fireworks in celebration actually comes from Bonfire Night and the Gunpowder Plot schemed by Guy Fawkes.
Unfortunately, unlike ol’ Guy, these guys actually managed to set off their device to celebrate surviving 2018 and to ring in the New Year.
Now, this was no average Roman Candle, or Kamuru, or Catherine Wheel – so named for Saint Catherine who was martyred on a spinning wheel, legend has it.
The unidentified incompetent rocketmen and/or women are thought to have strapped together two fireworks to make some sort of super device, befitting any pyrotechnic’s very fiery wet dream.
However, the DIY device supposed to dazzle and amaze simply served to ignite the fear of God into a dog and his two humans, one of whom told UNILAD all about the incident.
Luke Priest, 24, also snapped a picture of the charred remains of the double-rocket:
UNILADLuke had just left the house on New Year’s Eve to walk his two pups, Ziggy and Nico, with his dog-walking partner, Jacob, 23, when the ‘rogue firework’ came whizzing down the street.
He recalled how the makeshift firework ‘bounced off [his] car’ which was parked on the pavement and ‘exploded on the floor’, in the spot where the pair had just stood moments before with their canine companions.
Luke told UNILAD:
I saw them being lit and saw it coming but I was in complete shock. I couldn’t get my words out to warn Jacob and the dogs.
In the moment I was so scared but more worried about the dogs and getting them inside as I could see the green and red sparks flying at the dogs because they were so low down.
It felt like it was going on for hours but in reality it was a few seconds.
UNILADBut you don’t have to take his word for it. There’s a CCTV camera right outside the house which captured the near miss all on tape.
In the footage, recorded at about 8:35pm, you can see the pair leave the house, and a car drive serenely past just before the fireworks – literally – started.
Jacob ducks for cover behind a second car as Luke is dragged away from the explosions by the frightened little pups. Luckily, they were joined by the same lead for double the pulling power to keep Luke out of harm’s way.
Luke continued:
The reason it went so badly wrong was because they were aiming them down the street from a grass verge rather than up in the air.
Also they had sellotaped two rockets together.
Happily, everyone – dogs and humans alike – made it to 2019 without any injuries.
But Luke said it did put a dampener on his and Jacob’s evening, adding:
It literally ruined the rest of our New Year’s Eve.
We were supposed to be going round to a friends house but never went as it took about two hours to get the dogs settled and we didn’t want to leave them after that.
Still, Luke sees the funny side and told UNILAD he was alarmed to have ‘started the year with a bang’. Let’s hope the rest of the family’s 2019 passes in relative calm.
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A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.