Poker Player Survives Fire Attack

It was a horrific and unprovoked attack which left Scott Ranstrom in a coma for 2 months and fighting for his life, but now the online poker player has recovered enough from being doused in gasoline and set alight to recall the terrifying ordeal.

Four months ago, on April 19th, 69-year old Ranstrom was sitting at his usual spot in a Denny’s restaurant, the Tik Tok on SE 82nd Avenue and Powell in Portland, Oregon, when a complete stranger poured petrol on him and then set him on fire.

Ranstrom was ‘critically burned on his face, head, both hands and other parts of his body and spent 2 months in a medically induced coma’, and has since undergone several operations on his injuries.

“All of a sudden I feel liquid all over me. I realize it’s gas,” he told KOIN 6 News this week. “Then FAVOOM. I’m on fire,” adding “It feels like it was yesterday. I remember everything.”

“You’re on fire. You can’t do nothing. If that guy hadn’t jumped over the table and put his coat on me I wouldn’t be here,” Ranstrom explained to reporters. “My clothes were on fire… how do you describe what that’s like? Your hair is burning off, you smell it, you feel your skin burning.”

One of the restaurant’s servers, Courtney Hutchison, spoke about the retired army sergeant in glowing terms, saying:

“Customers or workers would come up with funny sayings on shirts and he would go and make shirts and they would be funny," adding: “He played poker and he would yell at the hands he would get. He usually left with a smile.”

Following the horrific attack, for which 24-year-old DeShaun Swanger has been charged with ‘aggravated attempted murder’ after being arrested nearby after an intense day-long police search, Ranstrom revealed:

“I had lost almost 60 pounds. I had no muscle mass whatsoever and I was flat in bed for another 2 and a half months.”

Of his near-death experience he stated:

“I came so close. For two months, while I was in a coma, they didn’t know if I was going to live or die.”

Now, four months on, his body is healing and he praised his family and friends for their unstinting support, describing his 77-year old brother and two sisters as “unbelievable” in their care for him.

“I never knew I had so many people that loved me. To have all these people come around me and share their love, I can’t tell you what a difference that made,” he told reporters.

The TikTok restaurant, his home-from-home, has plans for a fundraiser to help Ranstrom’s recovery, cook Kelly Carmon saying:

“He loved the people here, everybody loved him. He's a regular and it just hit everybody just really hard.”

Until the fundraiser is organised, they're encouraging people to donate to a GoFundMe account for Ranstrom.