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.
What an awful, yet unfortunately expected, end to his story. Hopefully people on the fringe see this as the cautionary tale that it is and try backing away from extremist social media. Otherwise we’re going to see more people doing more drastic things.
It’s unlikely that people who are already down the conspiracy rabbit hole will see this as anything other than another bad thing to weave into their web of other things that the grand mysterious them is doing to us.