Woman attacked with gasoline as man threatens to set her on fire

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A man throws gasoline into a woman's face -- then threatens to set her on fire.

"Whoosh, gasoline all over me, he's standing in front of me with a lighter about to set me on fire," said Iyana Thomas.

That's the terrifying moment that is giving Thomas, 29, of Southfield, nightmares.

"I'm scared," she said. "I don't know what else he's planning to do to me."

Thomas says Wednesday night she had been hanging out with a large group of friends roughly 20-30 people outside near Grand River and Ravenswood streets on Detroit's west side.

"We were all just hanging out and socializing and things like that."

Thomas says when she was talking to a friend, a man she used to date briefly -- suddenly came up behind her. Apparently he had a pop bottle filled with gasoline.

"He poured it directly in my eye, in my face, everything," she said. "The gas just splattered."

Thomas originally thinking someone dumped a drink on her, but then she said her eyes began to burn.

"Everybody's like Oh My God, he poured gas on her," Thomas said.

FOX 2: "What did he say to you?"

"He said '(expletive) if you ever disrespect me again, I'll kill you,'" Thomas said. "And he had a lighter in his hand like this, a red lighter."

Thomas says witnesses pulled the man away and she ran to her car filing a report with Detroit police.

"I never thought he'd do this to me," Thomas said.

Thomas says the man known on the street as "Pee wee" has been harassing her for three years.
 
"He's obsessed with me and he leaves all types of voicemails on my phone saying he's going to rape me, he's going to kill me," she said.

But Thomas says she thought she could handle him herself.

"I never really thought that he was really that serious until this happened to me," she said.

While Detroit police say their investigating in the meantime Thomas is terrified every second.

"Be careful," she said. "Just really think about the stuff that people say. They might be serious about what they say they are going to do."

Thomas said she feels lucky she got away this time.
 
"When you see the signs, don't ignore them," she said. "Because you never know what a person might do."