In 2019, the Cox family Fourth of July celebration was underway when Harlee, then 7, lay down beside her mom, Kayla Cox, to watch partygoers set off fireworks from the road below. When someone lit a large artillery shell firework, it tumbled over and the fireworks shot at the crowd, not up in the air. Then Cox witness every parent’s nightmare: Her daughter was on fire. “Her clothes and her hair on fire,” Cox, 35, from Indianapolis, tells TODAY.com.
” After the first skin grafts, Harlee headed home where her family had to continue the painful burn baths. Over the next year and a half, she had the remaining surgeries, some skin grafts and some revision surgeries to make her skin less ropey. “They tried to flatten it out as much as possible to make it soft,” Cox says. Harlee also had to do physical therapy to improve the range of motion in her neck. Even today, the family feels haunted by the fireworks mishap.