12-Year-Old Girl In Intensive Care After Setting Self On Fire For Viral Challenge

A 12-year-old girl is in intensive care after attempting a viral challenge that involved setting herself on fire.

Timiyah Landers, of Detroit, Michigan, was left looking like a 'fireball' after she poured alcohol on herself and set it alight while filming the whole thing for the dangerous online challenge.

She was at home with her mum, Brandi Owens and her fiance Marquell Sholar when Brandi described hearing a loud pop.

It was then that her daughter came rushing down the hallway with flames all round her body.

Brandi told the Washington Post: "She looked like a fireball. She was yelling, 'Help me'."

Marquell tried to put out the flames while also getting Timiyah into the bath, as Brandi grabbed through the flames to rip off the clothes with her bare hands.

"I was reaching through the fire. It was like a reflex," Brandi said.

"I didn't even feel the fire, I was just saving my daughter."

Brandi and Marquell eventually managed to put the fire out, but extensive damage had already been done - and they rushed Timiyah to hospital where she is now in intensive care, with nearly half her body covered in severe burns.

Timiyah had been attempting the 'fire challenge', a viral dare that involves pouring alcohol on your body before setting yourself on fire - and, of course, filming the whole process.

However, Brandi thinks that the perfumes and body spray that Timiyah was wearing at the time could have meant that the fire grew out of control.

She said: "When she put the alcohol on her and the girl lit the fire, it just basically blew up because she already had flammable things on her anyway, perfumes and stuff like that.

"They weren't expecting it to go that way. It was just a challenge, so it's a lesson learned for all of them."

While many things on the internet can go viral for fun, positive reasons, it's not always the case.

As well as the 'Fire Challenge' and the recent 'Hot Coil Challenge', one of the biggest online dares of this year was the frankly baffling 'Tide Pod Challenge'.

This saw youngsters videoing themselves putting a pod of Tide laundry detergent into their mouth - and eating it, despite the advice of doctors across the globe.

The strange but popular challenge is thought to have grown out of a popular strand of memes, which centre on the idea of someone wanting to eat the Tide laundry pods because they look like sweet, fruity snacks.