‘It could be me’: Surrey man witnessed assault victim get set on fire

A witness to an assault in which the victim was set on fire last week in Surrey says images of the assault continue to haunt him.

Just after 1 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 2, Mounties were called to a report of a serious assault on City Parkway near 102 Avenue. When they got to the area, they found the victim suffering serious injuries caused by fire.

Zeeshan Wahla, a Surrey resident and BC Conservative candidate for Surrey-City Centre tells 1130 NewsRadio that Rahat Rao, a local businessman at a currency exchange, told him to wait a couple of minutes while he dealt with another customer in the back room. Minutes later, Rao ran outside covered in flames.

Wahla says he followed Rao out into the parking lot and threw a blanket on him while others also tried to stop the fire and called 9-1-1.

Wahla says it felt like the whole building was on fire, adding, that he “ran outside the building and started shouting for help.”

He says the night that the incident happened, he was unable to sleep because the images kept coming back to him.

“You saw someone burning in front of you, and it’s very hard to explain,” he said. “When I got home, I started crying…It could be me, because I was in the shop too.”

Last Saturday the Surrey RCMP confirmed that a suspect allegedly assaulted a victim by throwing an accelerant on his body and then proceeded to light him on fire and the victim suffered serious burns to his body.

Wahla says he doesn’t know why the suspect attacked Rao, nor if the two knew each other.

The Surrey RCMP say they’re still trying to track down the suspect.