Man sets himself on fire outside of Trump’s court trial

A man set himself on fire on Friday afternoon near the Lower Manhattan courthouse where jurors were being chosen for the criminal trial of former President Donald J Trump.

The man, who had lingered outside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse earlier this week, doused himself with accelerant at around 1:35pm in Collect Pond Park, across the street from the building.

Onlookers screamed and started to run, and soon, bright orange flames engulfed the man. He threw leaflets espousing anti-government conspiracy theories into the air before setting himself on fire, reports New York Times.

People rushed and tried to put out the flames, but the intensity of the heat could be felt from some distance. After a minute or two, dozens of police officers arrived, running around and climbing over barricades to extinguish the blaze. The man was loaded into an ambulance and rushed away. The authorities said he was taken to a hospital burn unit in critical condition and was unlikely to survive.

A correspondent for CNN was reporting live on air when the incident occurred. “There is chaos that is happening,” CNN anchor Laura Coates said, describing the scene. “I can smell the burning of the agent used.”

“We now have officers removing their coats, trying to surround his body to engulf him from further going into flames,” she continued. “People are climbing over the barricade to try to separate the public from this man.”

A video showed the man was still in flames and twitching on the concrete as a police officer rushed over with a fire extinguisher.

He was later identified as Maxwell Azzarello, a native of St Augustine, Florida, who arrived in New York earlier in the week. Police officials said he was in critical condition.

They did not give Azzarello’s exact age but indicated he was born in 1987. He used an alcohol-based cleaning substance to light the blaze.

“Right now we are labeling him as sort of a conspiracy theorist, and we are going from there,” said Tarik Sheppard, a deputy commissioner with the New York Police Department.