A SOLICITOR yesterday said it was horrific that a man with mental health problems appeared in court for trying to set himself on fire after he separated from his girlfriend.

Gary Matthew McStravick, 45, of Prescott Street, Darlington, admitted a charge of affray after he drunkenly doused himself in petrol in the garden of his home.

Darlington magistrates heard how McStravick was struggling to cope after his girlfriend of ten years ended their relationship.

Police arrived to find him splashing petrol around "indiscriminately" from a can, and one officer was sprayed with fuel.

They had to wrestle him to the ground to restrain him.

David Maddison, prosecuting, said McStravick was aggressive and drunk at the time.

However, Laura Saunders-Jerrom, for McStravick, said he had a history of mental illness and that the case was exceptional.

She said: "To arrest a man for affray in the circumstances that have been described is horrific.

"There has never, ever been any suggestion that he was deliberately splashing anyone else with petrol.

"When you are in that state of mind, you do not really think about people around you coming to rescue you.

"What on earth he has been arrested for affray for I do not know."

McStravick was given a year-long community rehabilitation order and ordered to pay £50 costs.