Racism forces out fire attack victim

The black youth set on fire by racist thugs on Friday has been driven out of the Oxfordshire village that has been his home for all his 17 years.

Chris Barton had a near-miraculous escape after being sprayed with petrol from a moving car and set alight by white youths as he walked home early on Friday.

He managed to beat out the flames before being rushed to hospital.

Last night his face blistered and blackened, he talked of the attackers who laughed as they walked away, leaving him in flames. He said the horror means he can no longer live in the countryside.

Wincing with the pain, he told of his shock as the petrol was sprayed from a black car. "Two boys got out and stood right in front of me, then two even taller lads stood behind me," he said.

"There was a car on one side and a fence on the other. I couldn't go anywhere. The two lads in front of me pulled out lighters and said, 'You smelly Paki'. I stood there just frozen with fear and thought to myself, 'They haven't got the bottle to do it'.

"The next thing I knew the lighters were lit - I just kept my eyes on the lighters then they lit me up and just walked off, laughing.

"They were dead casual, they didn't even speed off when they got in the car - it was like nothing had happened." He was badly burned as he struggled to douse the flames, then staggered a few hundred yards to his girlfriend's home to raise the alarm.

"It was terrible, I can't explain how painful it was," he said. "I wouldn't want to go through anything like that again. It felt like an hour to get [to his girlfriend] but it was only five minutes."

The couple, who have been together for eight months, want to move from Berinsfield. "I definitely don't want to live there any more," said Chris. "I'm frightened to go out at night now. I will get lifts everywhere now, where I used to walk. If they would do that to me I don't know what they could do to other people."

His face and arms are covered in blistered burns. The only parts of his face to escape the flames were his "crow's feet", where he screwed up his eyes in agony.

He has a large blistered welt on his right forearm, and burns covering the backs of his hands.

Thames Valley police are appealing for witnesses. PC John Cornelius said: "We don't have many black people here.

"Most people living in Berinsfield are white and we only have about three or four coloured families. Berinsfield has had a bit of a reputation in the past but I've never heard of anything like this."

Tevfik Kalkan, a Turkish-born kebab takeaway owner, claimed Berinsfield was a hotbed of racial intolerance and was not at all surprised by the unprovoked attack. "I've been here for three months and I don't feel at all relaxed working here," he said.

"When I told my Turkish friends I was coming to work here they asked, 'Are you crazy?' The people here are almost all white, they scream abuse at me, throw beer bottles and kick my van. They don't accept you if you are from a different background to them. I fear that anything could happen to me here at any time."