Burned Alive: Classmates set him on fire 10 years ago, but Michael Brewer remains hopeful

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LOXAHATCHEE, Fla. (CBS12) — Michael Brewer, the boy who survived being burned alive 10 years ago, has a new, hopeful life earned through struggle.

His new fiancée and baby daughter are now glimmers of hope in a life that was forever altered when classmates set him on fire at 15 years old.

“[My daughter] makes everything complete. Them both. I couldn’t live without them,” Brewer said.

Recovery has not been easy for Brewer; he is permanently scarred and the sides of his body are mangled with skin grafts. Brewer says he remembers every detail and still suffers from post traumatic stress.

“I say I was set on fire. Burned alive basically,” he said in his first televised interview in years. “[Some people] have never heard of that gruesome thing before.”

Three classmates cornered Brewer in October 2009 at an apartment complex in Deerfield Beach. After days of intimidating him, he says they were there to settle a debt over a marijuana pipe Brewer claims they were forcing him to buy. As he remembers, one said, “nothing’s going to happen to you” while another poured rubbing alcohol on him and a third held a lighter.

Two assailants, young men themselves, pleaded no contest to charges related to the altercation. One took his case to trial and was convicted on lesser charges. All three did time in prison and were recently released.

Brewer remembers all three ran away as he looked at his hands and saw that he was on fire.

“I start walking and I’m like, ‘ow, ow.’ And I took off my shirt and seen my shirt was on fire,” he recounted. “At that point I’m like, ‘I’m burning.’”

He ran to a nearby pool and jumped in. He had second and third-degree burns on more than half of his body. Running to the pool likely saved his life. Bystanders lifted Brewer’s badly burned body out of the pool.

“They sat me down in a lawn chair by the poolside. And I’m just screaming at the top of my lungs,” Brewer said. “My basketball shorts were glued to my legs because of the fire.”

Brewer was airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. Television cameras captured his burned body in a stretcher as it was wheeled across the hospital’s helipad.

“The pain would have killed me. If they didn’t put me into an induced coma, my body couldn’t take the pain,” Brewer recalled.

Brewer woke up days later.

As he slept, his story fascinated national TV viewers as reporters clamored for interviews with his family and doctors.

But the ordeal was just beginning for Brewer.

Painful rehab was next as Brewer struggled to regain his mobility and strength. He is still coping with the effects.

“I have to live with the scars for the rest of my life. I don’t have the best mobility,” he said. “I’m in constant pain with my back because of the burns.”

In rehab, Brewer had the youthful face of a 15-year-old boy, but his sides and back were mangled. His voice had turned gravelly due to the trauma.

Showers with open wounds still haunt him. His family would play Ozzy Osbourne records full blast to motivate the teenage to shower through the pain and to mask his screams.

To this day, Brewer has continued psychological trauma and finds it hard to trust people.

“I don’t really have that many friends. Just because,” he said. “My family are my friends.”

After going home from the hospital, Brewer struggled with drug addiction. While he says he’s clean now, he has had multiple drug arrests over the years. He was on a number of painkillers in the hospital and had to wean himself off when he went home.

“I was also young. I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said. “I was trying to run and hide from what happened to me.”

Brewer lives for his fiancée and daughter, Espyn, named after a character in an Adam Sandler movie. The now 25-year-old lights up when he talks about her.

“She makes everything complete. Them both. I couldn’t live without them,” he said.

Brewer wants to thank the countless strangers who raised funds for his recovery and helped buy him a new life in Loxahatchee.

“Without those benefits, I would still be in Deerfield, they gave me an opportunity to start over,” he said. “They bought me a new life.”

JAY O’BRIEN: Do you want to live your whole live being considered the victim of what happened to you?

MICHAEL BREWER: No. I want to be the person who survived. Came through it. I don’t want to be known as the boy who was set on fire. I want to be the one who survived it and came through and did everything he could to get to where I am today

O’BRIEN: you want to be the man who lived?

BREWER: Yes. I do.