A Queens woman burned and disfigured by acid after her father allegedly tossed a cup of acid into her face was conscious and talking Sunday, her boyfriend said in a published report.
“She’s doing OK. She’s stable and speaking and in better spirits than yesterday,” said Louis Bradley, 53, told the Post.
Darlene Lynch, of 158th Street in Jamaica, was sitting on her the couch in her father's Brooklyn home Saturday afternoon when he left the room and returned with a cup of what she thought was water and doused her with it, she later told a cousin, according to the Daily News.
Then the corrosive burning started, and Darlene Lynch ran outside as her clothes disintegrated and her skin fell from her face, witnesses said.
"You could see the smoke coming off her body," Clarissa Shakespeare told the newspaper. "Everyone was just traumatized and scared. Her skin looked like melting wax."
Bystanders poured water on the victim, helped pull away her clothes and covered her with a sheet, witnesses said.
Jerome Lynch, 69, was arrested on an assault charge.
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“With God’s help, she’ll be up and out of here soon,” Bradley added as he left the burn unit at New York Presbyterian Hospital.
Darlene Lynch is the main caregiver for her father, who uses a wheelchair and has been deteriorating mentally in recent years, said a cousin, Dominique Goodwin, who was in Brooklyn on a visit from her home in Winston-Salem, N.C.
The daughter was taken to a hospital in critical condition, police said. The hospital declined to give an update on her condition Sunday.
Goodwin, told the Daily News that Darlene Lynch may lose her left eye because of the attack.
"(Darlene is) asking why her father did this. She doesn't understand," Goodwin said.
Shakespeare said Jerome Lynch sometimes poured bleach and ammonia in his building's hallway to deter children from playing there. But another niece said he generally welcomed spending time with relatives.
"He's usually laughing, smiling, telling jokes," Celeste Lynch told the Daily News.
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