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Photo: Amit Magal
Petah Tikva man dies after setting himself on fire
‘He was like a burning torch; just like you see in the movies,’ paramedic says. Man rushed to hospital with severe burns to his entire body, dies the next day
A 30-year-old man who set himself on fire Wednesday evening in the middle of a Petah Tikva street died of his wounds at the Rabin Medical Center in the city on Thursday.
“It was a horrific sight,” one eyewitness told Ynet. “He was like a torch, burning from head to toe.”
Firefighters who were dispatched to Jabotinsky Street at around midnight were able to extinguish the fire.
It was not clear why the man set himself ablaze. An initial investigation revealed that he had apparently purchased a number of cans of lighter fluid, poured them over his body, set himself on fire and began walking down the sidewalk.
“We couldn’t approach him because of the flames,” Magen David Adom paramedic Ohad Shahar said. “He was like a burning torch; just like you see in the movies. He was conscious and screaming out in pain.
“When the fire was put out we moved toward him but he yelled ‘let me go, don’t touch me, don’t treat me’ and went into frenzy despite his severe condition,” the paramedic said. “However, we were able to treat him and evacuate him to the hospital so the surgeons could open his respiratory tract.”
