the real danger of leaving the two year old alone in the car is the cigarette lighter.....this was widely reported at the time and can be found by googling
It was a weekday afternoon; Kellie O'Farrellwas playing in her parents’ car, which was parked on the drive outside their house. ‘My mum was checking on me every couple of minutes from the house,’ says Kellie. ‘But I managed to lock all the car doors from the inside; and then, I took out the cigarette lighter...and I let it fall on the car seat...’
Within minutes, the car was ablaze. Kellie’s mum, Caroline, realised almost straight away that disaster was unfolding – but because Kellie had locked herself into the car, she had to get a stool from the kitchen to break one of the car windows. By the time she reached her daughter, the burning ceiling of the car interior had fallen in. ‘She saved my life, because if I’d been in there for a few more seconds I’d have died,’ says Kellie. ‘But by the time she got to me, I was unrecognisable.’
She was rushed to hospital in Dublin, where doctors told her parents that she had a less than 50:50 chance of surviving. ‘For many days, that’s how it was – my mum and dad didn’t know whether I would make it or not,’ she says. It’s hard to imagine the torment they must have been going through. ‘It was very, very hard for them,’ says Kellie. ‘They relied very heavily on their faith; we’ve always been a strongly Catholic family, and their prayers and their belief in God were never more important than in those days.’
‘In many ways, I had to grow up at two,’ she says. ‘I realised that a lot of what happened next was going to be down to me – that I had to be very strong and very determined.’
Even when they knew their daughter was out of danger, the agony continued – because their gorgeous little girl’s appearance had changed out of all recognition. ‘That was so tough for them – it’s been a lot tougher for them than for me,’ says Kellie. ‘Because I was so young, and I don’t remember a time before I was scarred – whereas for them, there was always the memory of how I looked before. ‘It took a long, long time for them to be able to accept the way things were – and it was their faith, and our strong family, that got them through.’