11-Year-Old Tells Boy He Doesn’t Want To Play. Then He Smells Perfume & Realizes His Back Is On Fire

An 11-year-old boy from Newark, Ohio, was treated for second-degree burns after he was reportedly set on fire by another boy.

Amanda Tice said her son’s cousin, who is also 11 years old, admitted to police that he set Tice’s son, Steven, on fire. 

“It’s all I can keep hearing is the sound of those sirens,” she told WSYX. 

Amanda said that Steven and his cousin were at her mother’s house when he told the boy that he didn’t want to play with him since he had a ball game later that day.

“My son didn’t have a shirt on and just dumped perfume on him lit a lighter and walked out the door,” she said. Her 15-year-old daughter was luckily nearby, and put the flames out.

“It was the quick thinking of my 15-year-old. She got a pillow and started beating him with it. So, thankfully she was there and saved his life,” Amanda said. 

The suspect’s mother told the station that her son didn’t understand the severity of his actions, and that older children in the house saw both boys playing with a lighter and an aerosol can. 

“I think that child needs to be punished. My child, not only has he lost his whole summer, he’s scarred for life because of it,” Amanda said. 

Despite the burns, Steven said he was recovering well.

“I feel good,” he said. “My back [doesn’t] hurt that much.”

Many called for the child who set Steven on fire to be held accountable and even evaluated for his mental health.

“There is something seriously wrong with a child who sets someone on fire. Regardless of age he set a kid on fire. I see that as attempted murder. This kid needs to be evaluated, treated and arrested. If he does this at 11 then what will he do at 21?” one MommyPage reader commented on the site’s Facebook page. 

“An 11 year old should know it is very wrong to set another child on fire. Thank God it didn’t go any further. What would have happened if the boy said he didn’t want to play and the other child had access to a gun,” another wrote.

“The other parent needs to be held accountable because THEY’RE supposed to be supervising. No I don’t care how old they are. By 11 most parents are aware that they’ve raised unholy, spawns of hell and need to either adjust their parent modeling or admit they utterly fail as a decent human being for raising an entitled, vindictive, future inmate,” another added. 

Sources: WSYX, MommyPage/Facebook / Photo credit: Pixabay, Rebel Circus, Michael Gil via Wikimedia Commons