Eero looks to help employee whose 10-year-old son was burned by peers

Eero, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of a smart wireless routing system, is asking employees to help one of their colleagues after his special-needs son was burned in a fire set by some of his same-age peers.

According to a report in Fox News, the 10-year-old was placed in an induced coma earlier this month after being lured into a shack near his Kerrville, Texas home, doused with gasoline and set on fire. According to the boy’s own telling, says Fox, a child he knows enticed him to a field, where other children were waiting. The boys involved are reportedly ages 9, 10 and 11.

Whether the act was intentional or accidental is under investigation. At a news conference a day after Fox published its report, the town’s fire chief told reporters that “based on the results of our preliminary investigation, it does not appear that this event was premeditated or that there was any intent to harm any of the juveniles present . . . We have not been able to produce any evidence to suggest that there was any intent to commit bodily injury to any of the four juveniles.”

One of the boys was taken into custody nonetheless and charged with first-degree arson.

According to Recode, the child, Kayden Culp has come out of the coma in recent days and moved to a recovery center, where he can now “eat and drink on his own and is constantly smiling,” his father, Scott Culp, wrote in an email to Recode. Still, he remains in critical condition.

Eero CEO Nick Weaver tweeted about the incident earlier this morning, asking people to please donate funds to the family of Culp, who is part of a 30-person customer support team based in Austin.

Specifically, Weaver steered his followers (and employees) to a GoFundMe page, where a $10,000 goal has already been surpassed. A separate fundraising site for Kayden Culp has separately raised $261,000.

The campaign could surely use much more attention. Burn care is the one of the costliest areas of healthcare, given the long hospital stays, multiple operations and expensive equipment requirements involved.

We were in touch with Weaver this evening. He says Eero’s Austin-based team learned about Culp’s son roughly two weeks ago, when the incident took place; the rest of Eero’s headquarters found out just today and Weaver says the company’s focus is now on “supporting Scott, Kayden, and their family in any way we can.”

Photo courtesy of the Culp family.