In the split second it took for a tractor tire to explode in his face during auto shop class at Seminole Ridge High School, Dustin Reinhardt lost the use of his right eye, part of his brain and, nearly, his life.

But the tire rim that smashed into and shattered the boy’s skull and face didn’t cause him to lose his good humor or optimism.

“One day we were talking to him about his eye because we knew there was a good chance he would never see out of it again,” said Jo Ann Reinhardt, Dustin’s stepmother. “He tells us, ‘That’s OK. I still have another one.’ You just wanted to cry. He’s an amazing kid.”

That Dustin would emerge with his life following the horrific accident on Sept. 4, 2013 was no certainty. Dustin, then 16, was flown by helicopter to St. Mary’s Medical Center where doctors told Dustin’s parents that their son might not make it.

“Most people thought he was going to perish, that no matter what we did, there was little or no chance that he would survive,” said St. Mary’s neurosurgeon Dr. David Petruska, who operated on Dustin. “He was very much fighting for his life when he came here.”

The explosion in the Seminole Ridge garage took place while Dustin was using a pressurized air hose to fill an inner tube placed inside the modified rim of a tractor tire, according to a school police report. The practice is commonly used in off-road vehicles.

“All I remember is a loud boom, then black,” Dustin said.

What followed were six surgeries, including two on his brain, and two months in the hospital, one of which he spent in a medically induced coma. Aside from his brain injuries, the upper half of Dustin’s face was crushed, requiring reconstruction of his cheekbones, the bones around his eyes and the front of his skull.

“It’s probably pretty close to what it’s like having a bomb go off in front of you,” said Petruska, who along with his colleagues at Palm Beach Children’s Hospital at St. Mary’s, pieced Dustin’s face and skull back together with metal plates, screws, nylon mesh and donor bone.

A new life away from home

For most of the past year, Dustin has lived in a rehabilitation facility in Wauchula — about a three-hour drive from the Reinhardts’ home in Loxahatchee — for patients recovering from brain injuries.

“I still can’t believe I lived through that,” Dustin said with a hint of pride during a recent visit to his family’s home. “You don’t see too many people survive those types of accidents.”

The accident was the first of two in Seminole Ridge’s auto shop program last school year. Freshman Justin Perez sustained several broken bones and a punctured lung on April 11 when he was pinned to a work station table by a car driven by another student inside the shop’s garage area. A second student was slightly injured.

After the April 11 incident, district school officials closed down the garage portion of the class until reopening it for the start of the 2014-15 school year in August. Among the changes made to the course was the addition of a second instructor to better supervise students.

Dustin longs to return to Seminole Ridge, where he would be entering his senior year. Given the chance, he would happily sign up for the auto shop course, which was his favorite and one that he hoped would lead to a career as a mechanic or a long-haul truck driver.

But a return to Seminole Ridge may be unlikely. Dustin exhibits few obvious signs of the accident beyond his damaged right eye and surgical scars across his forehead and scalp, but neurologically speaking he’s a work in progress, his father said.

When Dustin was admitted to the Florida Institute of Neurological Rehabilitation last year, he was tested in several areas of brain function. On a scale of 1 to 7 — with 1 being totally dependent on others and 7 completely independent — Dustin scored 3’s nearly across the board, Scott Reinhardt said.

But recent testing showed that Dustin has regressed in a couple of areas, scoring 1’s in judgment and short-term memory. Those issues can cause Dustin to unknowingly behave inappropriately or quickly lose focus. For instance, Dustin has great difficulty sitting through more than 5 or 10 minutes of a movie and he often repeats stories recently told.

“To talk to him for a little while, you can’t really tell there’s anything wrong,” Jo Ann Reinhardt said. “But his deficits are things you cannot see.”

Scott Reinhardt said that doctors at the rehab facility don’t believe Dustin will ever gain complete independence or that he will able to hold down a full-time job. It may be another year before doctors can define the “new normal” for Dustin, his father said. It could be years beyond that before Dustin is well enough to leave the rehabilitation center.

Asked how he’s managed to cope, Dustin said: “Just keep a positive outlook on things. It helps you and helps other people. What’s the point of being sad?”

An expensive rehabilitation

Dustin, who turns 18 on Oct. 5, may be young but he’s gone through hardship before. A triplet along with his brother Dylan and sister Breanna, Dustin and his siblings lost their mother to congestive heart failure in March 2008 when they were 11.

Even then, Dustin showed an ability to roll with life’s punches.

“It’s just the way he was created,” said Scott Reinhardt, a pastor at Covenant Centre International in Palm Beach Gardens. “He’s been a positive kid since he was born. You could punish him and he would be your best friend a minute later. He bounces back. He’s just that type of person.”

Dustin comes home one weekend a month from the rehabilitation facility. On his August visit, Dustin spent an hour with guests playing with his beloved dogs, showing off the Junior ROTC leadership medal he received after the accident and answering questions about his recovery, often with humor.

When the subject turned to losing sight in his right eye, Dustin pointed out that while he couldn’t see out of the eye, he could still control it. He then tilted his head and stared cross-eyed at his visitors, drawing the laughs he was looking for.

“His attitude has played a major role in everybody else’s attitude,” Dr. Petruska said. “When he first came in here, everybody was very down as far as how he was going to do. But this is a special, remarkable young man. He has a degree of resiliency and maturity that you don’t see in kids his age.”

The one sure thing in Dustin’s recovery is that it will be expensive.

Jonathan Cox, the Reinhardts’ attorney, said a catastrophic insurance policy held by the school district will pay for most of Dustin’s medical bills for the near future. Cox said he has filed a claim against Seminole Ridge and the school district alleging negligence led to the boy’s injuries. Because of the uncertainty of what kind of care Dustin will need in the future and because his current medical bills are being covered, Cox said there is no immediate plan to file a lawsuit.

“Certainly there was a lack of supervision on the part of the school and the instructors in the program,” Cox said. “They didn’t learn from Dustin and, unfortunately, another young man was injured a few months later. If this was a private commercial shop, OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) would have shut them down a long time ago.”

A school district spokeswoman said officials would not comment on Dustin’s case because of privacy restrictions and pending litigation.

Raymond Craig, who ran the automotive academy at Seminole Ridge, told a school police investigator that he advised Dustin to “stand the tire up right and not stand directly in front of the rim area while filling the tire with air” shortly before the explosion, according to an official report of the accident. Several witness corroborated that version of events.

But Craig told another investigator that he had instructed Dustin to stop working on the tire once he realized the boy had modified the rim. Craig said he walked away once Dustin agreed to his directive and the explosion took place when he was about 10 feet from the boy, the report said.

Craig remains employed by the school district but is on an approved, unpaid leave of absence, according to a spokeswoman. Attempts to reach Craig were unsuccessful.

Changes made in automotive program

Seminole Ridge Principal James Campbell declined to speak about Dustin’s accident but said the automotive academy had been running for eight years without incident before last year.

Campbell said that he’s satisfied that the changes made to the auto shop class, including the addition of a second instructor and a two-week on-line safety class that begins the course, will keep students safe.

A tire inflation cage that the Reinhardts feel may have kept Dustin from being injured is not required in Seminole Ridge’s garage “because the equipment that we have is appropriate for the work the students are going to do,” Campbell said.

Cox, the Reinhardts’ attorney, said the changes are a step in the right direction, but adds he still has “significant concerns” about the program’s safety.

“Dustin has been through a lot,” Cox said. “He’s come through this as best as he possibly could and really seems focused in doing what he needs to do rehabilitation-wise while recognizing, unfortunately, that his life and his family’s life will never be the same again.’

For his part, Dustin isn’t looking to assign blame to anyone for his accident. Before he found out that Seminole Ridge’s auto garage had reopened, Dustin vigorously defended the program, saying that it provided an opportunity for kids like him “who love cars.”

“Everything happens for a reason,” Dustin said. “God gives you what you can handle and he knows I can handle this. So I haven’t gotten mad at anybody or anything. I didn’t even cry.”

What happened

Two students were seriously injured in two separate incidents at Seminole Ridge’s automotive academy last school year.

The fallout

School officials closed the garage, but reopened it this school year with several changes, including a second instructor and a required two-week safety program for students. Attorneys for the two boys have filed claims against the school district, a prerequisite to filing a lawsuit.