PORTAGE PARK — Cheri Steigert may never see or hear fireworks in the same way again.
On Friday, July 1, the Portage Park woman was stirred from her home when a man across the street began screaming the loudest scream she said she ever heard. He had just set off a firework in his hand.
It wasn't until hours later when the full effect of the incident hit Steigert.
"I saw my dog coming to the back door and I thought she had a baby rabbit in her mouth," Steigert said.
Steigert said she told her dog, a three-year-old mutt named Fergie, to drop the object. She grabbed some paper towels to wrap up what she thought was surely a dead baby rabbit.
But when the dog finally let go of the object, Steigert was able to determine that it was not rabbit, though the object was very fleshy: It was the remnants of the man's hand that had been blown off in the fireworks accident hours before.
As far as she could tell, her dog had found two fingers, some excess skin and some cartilage from a portion of the man's hand.
"You could tell it was human skin," she said. "I was shocked. I called 911 right away."
The sight of it, plus the man's screams, were enough to turn her away from fireworks for some time, Steigert said.
"I have Fourth of July PTSD," she said, referencing post traumatic stress disorder.
Steigert lives on the second home east of Austin Avenue, but the man was with friends setting off fireworks in an alley on the other side of Austin. That means the portion of the hand flew over the street, over her neighbor's house and settled somewhere in Steigert's backyard.
She said it must of flown 250 feet.
"Thankfully she just retrieves and doesn't eat," Steigert said.
The man does not live in the block but does work at the barber shop around the corner, and Steigert said he was probably with some customers and coworkers when the accident happened.
ABC Chicago identified the victim as Rafat Shejaeya. DNAinfo was not able to reach him Wednesday, but he told ABC he was recovering and urged people to "be careful" with fireworks.
Steigert said she hopes the man is doing fine but expressed doubt over whether doctors could use the piece of hand found in her yard.
"They say women have a longer life expectancy than men," she said. "Men do stupid things."
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