The case of the Taser and the burning suspect

Here's another reason for police to think twice before using stun guns, said Greg Ansley in the New Zealand Herald. A man in West Australia burst into flames when a police officer tried to subdue him by shooting him in the nose with a Taser gun. The man—Ronald Mitchell, 36—suffered third-degree burns over 10 percent of his body, and the officer scorched his hands trying to put out the flames.

"Sound ridiculous?" asked Dan Nosowitz in Gizmodo. "Not so much if you know the man was arrested on suspicion of huffing gasoline" to get high. But the poor officer probably regrets the whole thing: While he was trying to aid the "flammable man" he had Tasered, a young woman—"presumably high or stupid or both"—threw rocks at him.

The police aren't apologizing, said ABC.net. West Australia's police commissioner said Ronald Mitchell of the remote Warburton Aboriginal community had a history of violence, and he was resisting arrest when he was Tasered.

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