A Dublin girl has been left "traumatised and scarred for life" after she was struck in the face by a flying aerosol can which had been thrown into a rubbish fire in the area.
Nicole Wall was walking with a friend late on Wednesday night at the nearby blaze in Tallaght.
The 17-year-old had stopped to talk to people she knew when the air freshening can flew out, striking her in the mouth and cutting the lower half of her face.
Her mother, Sarah told Dublin Live that Nicole was lucky that she wasn't killed by the burning bottle.
She said: "Nicole had been sitting in watching television when her friend came to the door and asked her if she wanted to go for a walk.
"She was walking near the fire at around 10:30pm when she spotted people she knew and next thing, she had been hit."
Sarah said that when she brought Nicole to Accident and Emergency in Tallaght Hospital, the nurses were sure that a knife had been used to do the damage.
"It split her open from her lip all the way down to her chin. She had to receive 10 stitches.
"The doctors were sure that she had been attacked or cut open by someone. I even started to doubt it myself. But my husband, Ray, went back down to the fire and one of the people who had seen it happen confirmed that she was hit by the can and even went and got it for me."
Sarah said that the frightening incident has affected Nicole's school performance as she is currently sitting her Leaving Certificate exams at St. Aidan's Community school.
"She had an exam on Friday and the school called to say that she had a panic attack and had to leave in the middle of her test. This has now affected her Leaving Cert, she can't resit that exam. The school is looking to see if they can get her a private room for her next exam."
Her mother admits that if the can had hit her a few inches lower, it would have "cut her neck and killed her".
"These rubbish bonfires are extremely frequent and there's no measures being taken to stop them.
"My daughter could have been killed all because people won't pay to put out a wheelie bin.
"If it had hit her in the side of the head, she would have been killed stone dead."
Sarah said that something needs to be urgently done about the increased level of this kind of activity in the area before it seriously injures another person or worse, takes someone's life.
She concluded: "Unless the council step in and intervene, it's going to keep happening day after day."
Dublin Live has contacted South Dublin County Council for a comment.
