Man identified by police as Max Azzarello, from Florida, declared dead after incident outside lower Manhattan courthouse

A man has died after setting himself on fire outside the New York courthouse where Donald Trump’s hush-money trial is taking place.

The New York City police department said on Saturday the man had been declared dead by staff at an area hospital.

Officials had said earlier the man, who was in his late 30s, was in critical condition.

The New York police department said the man, who they identified as Max Azzarello of St Augustine, Florida, did not appear to be targeting Trump or others involved in the trial.

Witnesses said the man pulled pamphlets out of a backpack and threw them in the air before he doused himself with a liquid and set himself on fire on Friday. One of those pamphlets included references to “evil billionaires” but portions that were visible to a Reuters witness did not mention Trump.

  • Tiefling IRL
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    8 months ago

    A firefighting low-power 40mm grenade would actually be a dope idea, though I don’t know how effective it would be. There’s been attempts at similar “grenade” type extinguishers you toss.

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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      8 months ago

      My highdea is a firetruck that has cans of compressed nitrogen, and a firehose of sorts that’s got some resistive heating elements lining all the inside of it (that can be turned on or off). Then it just dumps out nitrogen at a huge CFM/PSI/whatever, displacing the oxygen quickly enough to blow out the fire, but not long enough to suffocate the immolator.

      Basically a huge, super powered hand dryer. That chokes the fire. And a 50/50 shot as to whether it’s nice and warm or freezing fucking cold.