A 43-year-old man burned to death after accidentally drinking from a jar containing gasoline and then smoking a cigarette. Gary Allen Banning burst into flames after the cigarette ignited some of the liquid he had spilled on his clothes. Police said Mr Banning was at a friend's apartment in Havelock, North Carolina, when he apparently mistook a jar of gasoline sitting by the kitchen sink for a drink. Realising his mistake he immediately spit out the gas, but some of it spilled onto his clothes. Sometime later, he went outside to smoke a cigarette and burst into flames. 'It was just a freak incident,' said WK Preslar, investigator with the Havelock Police Department.