Local & State Headlines

Self-inflicted burns kills man

• Tony Shipman was on probation from a Nashville-based corrections office according to the Tennessee Department of Corrections Web site.

J.D. Sumner

AUGUSTA –  A man who doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire in front of police after a domestic violence complaint Saturday, has died, authorities say.

Tony Shipman, 36, was taken to the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta Saturday morning after authorities say he lit himself on fire at an Albany mobile home park.

"I received word from the burn center that Mr. Shipman had passed," Dougherty County Coroner Emma Quimbley said.

Dougherty County Police responded to a mobile home at the Paradise Village Mobile Home Park on Holly Drive just after midnight Saturday after Shipman's girlfriend called police.

Sgt. Lee Reynolds, who was the responding officer, said that Shipman's girlfriend said that he had slapped or punched her and bit her son in the chest. When he arrived on scene, Shipman had moved deeper into the mobile home park.

When Reynolds made contact with Shipman, he was sitting on the ground in front of a mobile home at lot 195 and began to pour gasoline on the ground around him before dousing himself with the flammable liquid and setting himself on fire.

According to EMS reports, Shipman was still talking when paramedics arrived to transport him to Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital where he was prepped for transport to the burn center.

According to the Tennessee Department of Corrections Web site, Tony Shipman was on probation from a Nashville-based corrections office.

Reynolds said that Shipman appeared to be intoxicated and was extremely noncooperative and combative before the incident. Attempts to negotiate with him were unsuccessful, Reynolds said.

"I just kept hoping that he was talk to us. To give us a chance to help him, but there just wasn't any talking to him.

"In my 25 years this s simply the worst I've seen," Reynolds said. "I've spent 20 years with the city and five with the DCP and seen a lot of really bad things. But for this to happen right in front of my eyes; it's still just unbelievable."

More Headlines>>