by Adeola Balogun

A homosexual man who was set ablaze in a random attack has emerged out of the flames a beautiful woman.

Russell, now known as Tori Banks, had lighter fuel thrown on him by a hoodlum named Mitchell Dean who also set him on fire.

Russell was hospitalized with severe burns and had no chance of a normal life until he decided to turn into a woman.

The Mirror reports:

Russell was left with 30 per cent burns to his upper body and kept in a coma with little chance of survival. When he did fight back from the brink of death and saw himself in the mirror, he ­contemplated suicide.

Then, from somewhere stretching back into his ­childhood, a ray of hope emerged. Tori explains: “I didn’t want to go on living because the attack had taken every last ounce of my identity away from me.

“I didn’t look or feel like Russell any more. Then something ­life-changing happened. One night I was at home when I thought that to carry on I had to be someone else. Someone better.

“I realised it was a clean slate and a chance to be anything I wanted. That thing wasn’t a gay man any more – it was a woman.

“Everything in me told me that. I looked back at the way I was as a child – always opting for girly clothes and toys. I remembered realising I fancied boys for the first time and being told by people I was gay, so that was what I accepted.

“But deep down it wasn’t that. I was born in the wrong body, but I’d suppressed it.”

“Everything I used to be had been stripped away and I was left with one thing – a woman. Tori was the phoenix rising from the ashes.”