A Long Beach resident was shaken up but unharmed recently when an errant firework burst through his bedroom wall, covering him in sawdust and embedding shrapnel in the drywall of his apartment near the Traffic Circle.
“I’m still trying to piece it all together myself,” the resident, Cory Schmillen, said.
Shortly after 1 a.m. Sunday, Schmillen awoke to a whistling sound and a loud explosion “like a concussion grenade,” Schmillen said. There was smoke, bright light and intense heat in his upstairs unit in the 4700 block of Malta Street.
Not knowing what had happened, Schmillen fled his room but soon had to run back in to grab his phone. When he called 911 and the dispatcher asked what the emergency was, he responded “I don’t know.”
Soon, though, firefighters arrived to investigate the explosion. There were no flames, just residual smoke in one bedroom of the house, said Long Beach Fire Capt. Jack Crabtree.
The firework, which investigators believe was a mortar, blew through the exterior stucco and created a hole in the bedroom wall about three feet above Schmillen’s bed, he said.