Boyfriend, 25, dies after his skin ‘melted off’ when his ‘girlfriend, 24, sprayed him with 50 cents worth of gasoline and turned him into a human fireball’ during row at Texas gas station
A woman has been charged with murder after ‘melting the skin off’ her boyfriend at a Texas gas station and driving away ‘smiling’.Breana Johnson, 24, doused Ricky Doyle, 25, in petrol as he sat in the backseat of a Jeep and set fire to him after a row on July 18, according to the Arlington Police Department.
Doyle died on Tuesday in a Dallas-area hospital after a two weeks struggle for survival following the horrifying attack, prompting the Johnson’s aggravated assault charge to be upgraded to murder.
Doyle’s mother Lisa told NBCDFW how doctors said his foot ‘was the only part of his body I could touch. That’s all that was left.’
Johnson was heard to tell Doyle ‘I’m going to kill you’ at a Shell gas station during the argument, and went inside and paid for $0.50 worth of gas.
Witnesses saw her return and pour the gasoline over Doyle and walk around to the driver’s seat and set it on fire in what had seemed like a premeditated and thought-through attack.Doyle escaped from the car engulfed in flames and was seen screaming through the parking lot unable to stop his body from burning.
A customer rushed to his aide with a fire extinguisher and put the flames out. A witness said Doyle was ‘bleeding and had skin that appeared to have melted off his body,’ said the police charging document.
Johnson told witnesses that she was smoking while pumping gas which was the accidental cause of the fire.
However, witnesses who had seen Johnson allegedly deliberately set Doyle on fire confronted her, with one trying to detain her until the police arrived.But Johnson pushed the person to the ground and drove away while smiling, the police report said.Doyle’s family said he was first taken to Medical City Arlington before being transferred to a hospital in Plano, where he was being treated for burns covering more than 90% of his body.
They said the top of his head, groin and buttocks areas, along with the bottoms of his feet were spared.
Doyle’s little sister, Mikayla, said the argument between Johnson and Doyle initially started outside the family home in Arlington.
‘She [Johnson] just started beating on his chest. She took his phone. She threw his phone.
Then she came back and she picked his phone up, threw it at him, and then started beating his chest,’ Mikayla recalled. We knew she was abusive to him, but we didn’t know it would come to this.
This is really a traumatic experience for the deceased family. We live in a crazy world, so be careful who you date.