A MAN is fighting for his life after setting himself on fire after pouring petrol on himself.
The 30-year-old turned himself into a human fireball following a row with his wife at about 2am on Saturday.
He tipped a can of the flammable fluid over his body and struck a light causing him to explode into flames.
The man ran down Ash Terrace in Catchgate in Stanley, tearing his burning clothes off, before running home where his wife called an ambulance.
He told police afterwards he did not know why he had done it.
The man was taken to Newcastle General Hospital before he was transferred to the burns unit at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.
He suffered burn to eighty per cent of his body and today his condition was described as 'critical but stable'.
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