Florida Man stories are not just limited to the meth-addled Wal-Mart types but extends to other aspects of society as well. The details of why the officer on the scene thought it was a good idea to tackle the 26 year old while he was refilling his motorcycle remain unclear but according the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office in Florida claims that the victim of the burns, Jean Barreto, was part of a suspected gang of motorcycle enthusiasts that were driving recklessly and also pointed a gun at other drivers. Whether or not this is true is a mystery, but I would be willing to bet that the did not find a gun on Jean, or they would have pointed that out now that they are in deep doo-doo for doing a truly stupid thing. I don't think you need to have too much intelligence to realize that sparking devices such as tasers and gasoline don't mix very well, but that is exactly what the officers did.
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It's a pretty gruesome image to draw up in my mind but then again, I wasn't there. I don't know if Jean was resisting or planning to flee the scene but the way the witness accounts stack up it appears as though the suspect was tackled to the ground before he could put his gas cap on his bike. Once tackled both Jean and the officer ended up getting gasoline dumped on them and it wasn't until 3 other officers arrived at the scene that one of the geniuses decided that using a sparking device to restrain the suspect, next to a fuel pump, was a good idea.
The gasoline immediately lit, covering most of Jean's body in flames and the officer as well. Jean, pictured above, has burns of 3/4 of his body. The condition of the officer was not released.
The title of the above video is misleading and just adds to my disdain for the media in general. "Florida man severely burned when fire erupts during arrest at gas station." If someone simply read that title they would probably have no idea that it appears to have been due to negligence on the part of officers that lead to this deadly situation in the first place.
I'm not saying the Jean is totally innocent in this. If he was waving guns around while driving his motorcycle than that's pretty shit, but the Police Department readily admits that Jean Barreto was unarmed at the time of the flying tackle the officer put on him from behind.
The Fire Marshall additionally has confirmed that the fire was started by a taser, which Jean Barreto did not own so it kind of seems a bit easy to figure out. The Police Department in question isn't releasing any information at all right now and they haven't released body cam footage from the other angles either. Is this a case of the police attempting to protect their own? It certainly would seem that way.
The thing that really annoys me about this is that they had not yet determined that Barreto was a threat and he also was not in a position to flee seeing as how at the point of the tackle he was being closely pursued by 3 police cruisers. It seems as though there were a ton of ways in which they could have handled this better.
