The nurse who rushed to the aid of a Sri Lankan asylum seeker who set himself alight has described the moment she knew the man would not survive.
Esther Merrett knew something was wrong when she saw black smoke in the air outside a Geelong unit block.
Leorsin Seemanpillai, 29, was on fire, distressed and screaming.
"All his skin was peeling off his limbs and he was really distressed," Ms Merrett told the ABC.
"When he lost consciousness that made me realise he was probably not going to do very well and he was probably dying."
Ms Merrett says she felt so much sadness for the man who was the same age as her.
"The fact that someone would rather do that to themselves than live probably means that there's something very, very wrong with what's going on with asylum seekers," she said.
Mr Seemanpillai was living in Geelong waiting for his application for a protection visa to be finalised.
But he had grave fears he might be deported back to Sri Lanka, fears that were exacerbated when Immigration Minister Scott Morrison announced in October that Sri Lankan asylum seekers would be sent home.
Refugee support worker Cathy Bond said Mr Seemanpillai had been anxious about that possibility the day before he died.
"He said, `what will happen to me? What will happen to me if they refuse my case?'," she said of her last conversation with her friend.
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