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.

  • recapitated@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Lesson of the day: don’t self immolate. The most you’ll get from your opponents and sympathizers are shrugs.

    • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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      7 months ago

      Or just “Don’t kill yourself.” Unless maybe you’re about to be tortured into revealing secrets that could get innocent people harmed and you have a cyanide pill. Otherwise, suicide is pretty much always going to be too much medicine for the sickness. Things are bad? Killing yourself guarantees they will never get better.

      I realize it’s easy to simply say this, but it’s still true…

      • ChexMax@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I think I understand the sentiment here, but you are assuming no matter how bad it is, the state a person is living in is inherently better than death. I think you’d find a lot of people can imagine a life worse than death. Death means everything is over, blank, no more consciousness. That sounds better than unhappy life to me, and it definitely sounds better than miserable life.

        • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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          6 months ago

          you are assuming no matter how bad it is, the state a person is living in is inherently better than death.

          I didn’t say that. My point is more that ending a life (including your own) is permanent and irreversible.

          Death means everything is over, blank, no more consciousness.

          You don’t know that, no one does.

          Not trying to be argumentative, just clarifying…

          • Gabu@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            You don’t know that a flying pink unicorn doesn’t follow you around everywhere. Is it safe to assume it does?

        • daltotron@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Death means everything is over, blank, no more consciousness. That sounds better than unhappy life to me, and it definitely sounds better than miserable life.

          That sounds better, but I kind of doubt that realistically anyone can actually understand what “no more consciousness” realistically means, because it’s axiomatically opposed to the idea of consciousness itself, to the degree that you cannot experience it. “oh I get it when I go to bed” or “oh it’d just be black nothingness with no thought” yeah that’s bullshit. People think that cause they smoked weed and it shut off their internal monologue, that’s the same as true oblivion. It’s not, it’s imperceptible, by it’s very nature. Maybe you could make an argument against fearing on that basis, on the basis that it’s un-understandable, much as epicurus did, in fact, that’s an argument I’d make, but that’s a different argument altogether.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          6 months ago

          Well definitely don’t kill yourself for a random political reason. Especially for an individual that isn’t even in power currently. Also don’t kill yourself if he ever gets into power, because how on Earth does that help?

          But then again we’re attempting to apply logic to a situation where it clearly was absent.

    • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Azzarello: You’ll pay for this, with your kleptocrats’ blood!

      Establishment: Oh right, how you gonna get em, skeleton power?

    • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      For law enforcement maybe they shouldn’t rescue after a certain amount of time 😔? Like that was 2 minutes. Maybe cut off at 1 minute? I don’t know, it sounds so painful. One of my family members was burnt accidentally by hot liquid and those years of pain and suffering are a mark in my life and obviously in their life. Imagine 100C vs 800 to 1200C in a fire, and instead of just a single burn, continuous burn for minutes? 😞 And to survive that to live one more entire day in possible the most painful way possible.

      • Tiefling IRL@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        6 months ago

        I imagine your nerves die off after a certain moment. That said, I’ve willingly burned myself enough that I can only imagine the intense body pain as it happens. I’d also imagine your lungs feel like they’re also on fire during it, smoke inhalation sucks.

        • daltotron@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I imagine your nerves die off after a certain moment. That said, I’ve willingly burned myself enough that I can only imagine the intense body pain as it happens

          This is most certainly the case after a certain case. The lack of oxygen able to get to the lungs as a result of fire inhalation is probably capable of putting someone down within about three minutes, if that, probably much sooner, and probably sooner than your nerves would bake, I’d wager. That’s all if the shock and trauma of being on fire doesn’t cause you to pass out or otherwise shut down before that happens, which I’d also wager would be the case for most.