A man who had been sniff­ing petrol burst into flames when police Tasered him as he charged towards them bran­dish­ing a bot­tle of fuel. The man, iden­ti­fied by his fam­ily as 36-year-old Ronald Mitchell, was in crit­i­cal con­di­tion at a Perth hos­pi­tal in West­ern Aus­tralia state.

Police said they were respond­ing to a com­plaint at a house when Mitchell ran out­side car­ry­ing a cig­a­rette lighter and a plas­tic bot­tle con­tain­ing what they believed was fuel. When he refused to stop run­ning towards them, one offi­cer Tasered him, police said.

The man was imme­di­ately engulfed in flames, but the offi­cer threw him to the ground and smoth­ered the blaze with his hands, the state­ment said. Mitchell was charged with assault to pre­vent arrest and pos­ses­sion of a sniff­ing substance.

An 18-year-old woman threw rocks at the offi­cer as he tried to help and he was later treated for a cut on his head and burns to his hands, police said. The woman was charged with two counts of assault­ing an offi­cer, police Sergeant Gra­ham Clif­ford said.

Two oth­ers at the house in War­bur­ton, an Abo­rig­i­nal com­mu­nity 950 miles north­east of Perth, were charged with pos­sess­ing a sniff­ing sub­stance. Mitchell’s sis­ter Morinda West claimed her brother had been sniff­ing petrol and that, when he ran out of the house, he was car­ry­ing a lighter and an orange juice con­tainer full of the fuel.

Police spokes­woman Susan Usher said Mitchell appeared to have received third-degree burns to about 10% of his body. The offi­cer who Tasered Mitchell was not sus­pended, Sgt Clif­ford said.

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