I don’t doubt that Lithium Ion batteries have caught fire. . . The failure rate of such batteries is 1 in 50,000 per year and millions of these e-cigs have been sold, so 2,035 is likely a low number for fires.
But they don’t “explode” the burst into swell, heat-up, or burst into flame, not “explode,” which is a newspaper hype word to garner clicks and and sell news. Even the infamous Samsung Galaxy Note 7 cellular phone that had to be recalled do to a 1 in 3000 battery failure rate did not really “explode” as the papers reported. . . Even though some car and house fires resulted from them. They expanded, swelled, heated up, and burst into flame. . . And not that many of them because they had not sold that many of them before they were recalled.
My point is that working in a dental office, I see LOTS of 3D panelipse x-rays of skulls and jaw damage. . . and what is being described here, with what is said about the LIP damage does NOT agree with an explosion of a battery that is inches away from that mandible. IT COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED THE WAY THE TEENAGER DESCRIBED! There is simply not enough force in a Lithium Ion battery to break a mandible. Something else happened. . . The kid is covering up something else that happened.
Had he said his HAND was damaged by a flaming lithium Ion battery, then, yeah, I can see that. . . Because that’s where the battery is. The LI battery is no where near the lips, teeth, and jaw where the damage is. It’s several inches away and cannot drive itself with enough force to break a jaw with what was described as the damage done in a “car accident,” especially in a linear fashion.
I note in the 3D-Tomograph (there is a distinct center of force) that the application of force appears to have hit somewhere below the lip line, at a point below the sulcus, the line where the teeth enter the mandible. It looks as if someone may have HIT the end of the e-cigarette with a hammer and drove the mouthpiece into the teenager’s face. Again, that’s not something the battery could have done. Such batteries don’t suddenly act like rockets. There would have been burns on his hands.