Man seriously injured after his shower door explodes while in use

CHESTERFIELD, Va. (WWBT/CNN Newsource/WKRC) - A man was seriously injured and required surgery after his glass shower door exploded while he was using it.

Kevin Caple told reporters that he was taking his afternoon shower, like any other day, when disaster struck.

"After taking a nice, hot shower, I'm using this hand and opening the shower door and it moved maybe about an inch or two, just barely enough to start moving in," Caple said. "Right as it was moving, just bam! It exploded, everything came down on me."

Caple said that shards of glass rained on his hands and feet, slicing them immediately.

"I knew that I was in trouble and I was in shock," he said. "I immediately jumped through all the broken glass, grabbed the towel, put a quick tourniquet across my foot to stop- I didn't want to see the wound."

Caple said that he could tell he was getting weaker and sat down on the couch while he called 911. First responders treated Caple's wounds at his home, but knew he would eventually need to go to the hospital for stitches and surgery.

"They had to take a tendon from another toe to fix the tendon to the big toe," he said.

Caple's shower door was tempered glass, which the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a safety alert for in 2018 after it reported an estimated 2,300 injuries from shattered glass shower doors between 2012 and 2016.

"If it had a small chip in it while it was being installed, and over time I've been taking showers with extremely hot water, if any of that water got into the glass where it was damaged that could have made the glass door explode," he explained.

An attorney told local outlet WWBT that Caple and others affected by similar issues could file a liability case, but must be able to prove that "they didn't comply with manufacturing standards."

"It's important that you take steps to preserve as much of the product as possible, meaning... the glass... the hardware, and keep that preserved so that if you do what to bring a case that the glass can be tested, that the hardware can be tested."

"It could have been worse," Caple said. "I could have passed out in there and nobody would have known I was here."