SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Electrical shock / short

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20180618-2C85E-2147387313. Severity: Injury, Hospital Admission. Product: Tomcat Tomcat Rat Trap (wooden) (Wooden and metal snap trap for rodent control). Incident: I am writing to notify you of a malfunction with a Tomcat wooden rat snap trap that caused me to suffer a serious eye injury. Monday June 6th just before 2pm, in my home, a set trap was about 10 feet away from me when the hammer tripped but not due to the trigger arm operating normally. Instead, the small metal U-shaped staple that holds the trigger arm came loose from the wooden base, which triggered the trap and shot the staple straight into my right eye. The trigger arm went flying in another direction; the trap basically blew up sending metal pieces flying around the room. It was a shocking, painful, and traumatic event in which I suffered deep lacerations to my inner eyelid, lacerations to my cornea, and damage to my pupil and globe. I lost vision completely. After being seen at the nearest hospital they transferred me to another hospital with more advanced equipment and an optometry specialist. He performed emergency surgery to repair the cuts in my eye, and I will have stitches in my eyeball for a few more weeks. At that time, we'll know how much of my vision will fully return. As we look closer at the trap, we are surprised to realize how insecure that staple is, it would be so much safer if it was longer and hammered down on the backside to secure it from coming loose and airborne with all the pressure of the springs behind it. My Father in Law has said that he's also had that u-shaped nail come out of a Tomcat trap before but he never found where it flew to, thankfully he was not injured like I was. I'm so interested to know if other consumers of this product have