It didn't take Lancaster police long to discover a potential danger with their newly issued stun guns: They can set their targets on fire. One day after officers received Tasers this week, two of them were patting out the flames on Daniel Wood, a 31-year-old homeless man who reportedly had been inhaling a chemical from a spray can to get high. Wood was not seriously injured but was taken to a hospital as a precaution, said Lancaster Police Chief David Bailey.
"Clearly, this is not the way we'd hoped to get started," Bailey said. "But I'm glad the suspect is OK, and this gives us an opportunity to review how we will do things from this point."
The makers of stun guns warn that such fires are extremely rare but a risk nonetheless, and Lancaster's written policy for the department's seven new Tasers says that the devices shouldn't be used when flammable materials are evident.
Bailey said his officers acted appropriately given the situation and Wood's combative behavior.
"There was no recognition on the part of these officers that this would be the result," Bailey said. "They didn't know the vapor was present and would flash. ... It wasn't as if the suspect was doused in a chemical."
CNN reported last month that a man in Australia who had been huffing a chemical poured gasoline on himself as he charged police. An officer used a stun gun, and that man burst into flames and was seriously injured.
And a man died in Texas in 2007 after police hit him with pepper spray and then jolted him with a stun gun, according to published reports.
Authorities in both cases said the men were carrying lighters in their hands, so the source of ignition couldn't be determined for certain.
In Lancaster, the officers responded just after 8 p.m. Monday to a report of a man darting into traffic and yelling threats outside the Kmart on Memorial Drive.
When the two officers arrived, Wood was holding a can of keyboard cleaner in his hand, and one of the officers saw him inhale the chemical, according to a written report.
Wood took off running and, once caught, kicked the officers and tried to bite them, the report says. That's when an officer used his stun gun, hitting Woods in the chest and an arm with the charged prongs.
"I then observed a flame ignite and I quickly shut off the Taser," wrote the officer, identified only as H.W. Lanham. "(I) approached him and patted out the flame."
Wood has a history of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and alcohol and drug charges in Fairfield County Municipal Court.
He was charged on Monday with resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer and abusing harmful intoxicants and taken to the Fairfield County jail. He was released about 11:30 p.m. Monday and rearrested yesterday when he failed to show up in court.
Arizona-based Taser International has sold 430,000 devices to law-enforcement officers at 14,750 agencies. Spokesman Steve Tuttle said the warnings about possible ignition are clear but that the incident described in Lancaster "is beyond freakish."
Lancaster police officers have spent the last four months training under an instructor certified by the Ohio Peace Officers Training Academy, Bailey said. Officers also had to pass a qualifying test.
Spokesmen for both the State Highway Patrol and the Columbus Division of Police, where most troopers and officers carry stun guns, said their training is extensive, and that their respective policies also warn of the risk of fire.
