The rider died on Thursday afternoon from internal injuries, multiple fractures, and burns to 50 per cent of his body.

A 33-year-old family man and sheet metal worker, he was on his way home from work on Wednesday afternoon when the youths' stolen BMW X5 failed to give way at an intersection in Mitcham.

Fifteen minutes later, the men abandoned the BMW on the shoulder of EastLink, ran up an embankment, scaled a fence, and began terrorising residents in Haideh Place, Scoresby.

After ripping open the door to one home, they took the keys to a Toyota Camry and fled. That car was found burnt out almost seven hours later in Narre Warren North.

At the same time as the home invasions, residents in Mitcham were responding to another horror: a motorbike and its rider in flames in the middle of Orient Avenue.

Garden hoses and buckets were used to douse the flames, and the rider was wrapped in a blanket.

"It was a big, big fire. I didn't even know it was a motorbike, I thought it was a car," one resident said.

Once the flames died down, she saw the rider lying in the road. He was not moving, but he was alive, and being comforted by those who had rushed from their homes.

"They were just saying the ambulance is coming, it will be OK," she said.

Detective Inspector Stuart McGregor from the major collision investigation unit said the man had been dragged 85 metres along the road under the car.

The friction from the motorbike being scraped on the asphalt caused the fire.

It did not appear the youths in the BMW had been travelling at excessive speed, he said.

It has been some months since youth crime, such as that seen on Wednesday and Thursday, gripped Melbourne.

And Detective Inspector McGregor dismissed any suggestion the youths, who will also be investigated for other crime linked to the BMW, which was stolen in late October, were part of an organised gang.

Police had no information about their descriptions other than that at least one was Caucasian.

"I wouldn't say that it's an organised gang, it's just people who play a game. They play the game of stealing cars and driving fast," he said.

"It's like they're playing a video game. And unfortunately this is a real life game. And unfortunately people get hurt. And what happens is people go to jail.

"And that's going to be the result of this: someone got hurt, and these people are going to go to jail."

He said police had strong leads on who the men were.

"The fact is, you're going to have to face justice, the fact is, we're going to arrest you.

"You may as well do the right thing and hand yourselves in."

John and Kerryn, who've lived in Haideh Place for 26 years, were working in the garden on Wednesday afternoon and had no idea their home had been invaded.

The first sign that something was wrong was when Kerryn saw the mangled front security door with the bottom left-hand side wrenched up.

Her first, panicked thought was for the safety of her 21-year-old daughter who was inside.

'I just thought, 'oh my God, Sarah'," Kerryn told Fairfax Media.

"I didn't know what danger she was in, if someone was still in the house. I crawled in under the door, screaming to John.

"When you're a mother it doesn't matter, you've got to get to them whatever it takes."

Luckily none of the family encountered the youths who quickly grabbed a phone, a wallet and car keys from the hall stand.

They made off with John's Toyota Camry sedan.

"We thought it was a safe, quiet neighbourhood," John said. "Nothing like this has ever happened here."