A police officer who failed to deal professionally with a horrifying ordeal when she attended reports of a fight has been sacked.

Probationary officer Stephanie Eglon stood back and watched while a man suffering from extreme burns smoked a crack pipe in front of her.

The young officer also failed to act when the man was trying to ignite a gas hob in his kitchen.

A second officer, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was given a final written warning which will hang over her for three years for her role in the incident.

A misconduct hearing was told that the pair were not prepared for the sights they discovered when they arrived at the house to find a man whose skin was peeling off after being doused in petrol and set alight.

Both Cleveland Police officers were found to have breached the force’s professional standards when they failed to professionally deal with the situation while the seriously injured man smoked a crack pipe and tried to ignite a gas cooker.

An independent disciplinary panel listened to two days of evidence before ruling that Miss Eglon and Officer B were found guilty of gross misconduct as a result of their actions last September in Middlesbrough.

The first officer was found to have allowed the man to smoke from his crack pipe and allowed him to try to ignite the cooker during the incident but she was cleared of turning off her body-worn camera to avoid recording his behaviour.

It was also proven that she failed to pass on relevant information to paramedics and made an inaccurate record of the event. She was also cleared of a charge connected to the evidence she gave in court.

Officer B was cleared of allowing the burns victim to smoke the crack cocaine and of turning off her personal camera at the time.

She admitted that she failed to record that the man had tried to light the cooker in the kitchen and accepted that she could have given paramedics essential information about the burns victim.

Simon Mallett, the chairman of the independent panel, said the seriousness of Miss Eglon's failings meant that only dismissal without notice was a suitable punishment.

He said: "The officer was faced with a challenging and difficult situation which she had responded to.

"She failed in her role when she allowed the man to smoke a prohibited drug."

Miss Eglon will now be placed on the College of Policing's barred list preventing her from working for any other force in the country.

The legally qualified chairman told Officer B that her failures were not serious enough to warrant immediate dismissal after she failed to act when the man was trying to ignite the cooker.

The young officer was given a final written warning.

During the hearing, the panel was shown some body-worn camera footage where the man could be heard shouting in pain and the officers trying to calm him down.

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Initially, the man claimed he had done it to himself by accident but Officer A’s investigation revealed that another man had turned up at the address, doused the man in petrol before setting him alight and fleeing the scene.

The injured man suffered severe burns as a result and was placed in an induced coma in hospital while medics carried out specialist treatment.

James Bourne Arton, representing Officer B, said his client was a probationary officer at the time of the incident and was wholly unprepared for the scene of horror that she discovered.

Joan Smith, representing Officer B, said her client accepted that she ‘froze’ when confronted with the man tried to light the cooker inside his home on Crathorne Crescent and admitted she could have handled the situation better.