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.

  • Flying Squid
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    668 months ago

    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.

    It took The Guardian four paragraphs to get to that. This is why Trump’s people are going to turn this guy into a martyr. Because the media isn’t making it clear enough that this had nothing to do with Trump.

    • Funderpants
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      358 months ago

      Sounds like, on limited info, he went where he knew cameras would be.

    • @[email protected]
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      148 months ago

      “did not appear to be targeting Trump”…“A pamphlet angry at evil billionaires”

      I could see Trump being triggered that the guy coming to protest rich people was not there for him.

      • @Spiralvortexisalie
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        88 months ago

        Yeah the media is trying to silence this man’s message, a lot of the national news won’t even bring up his immolation. Even the locals have dialed back mentioning anything about his message, only saying “he did not breech the perimeter of security” about the event. He died to bring an important message, it feels wrong to bury it. If it is crazy, let the people decide for themselves: https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside

        • @[email protected]
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          8 months ago

          Thanks for the link.

          TL;DR: the world is in a Ponzi scheme, the elite are using cryptocurrency to get richer, all of the elite are in this together including politicians “competing” with each other, and the only possible outcome is either societal collapse or a fascist state. And The Simpsons and other media proves this is true.

          There was also this:

          In order to explain the massive anomaly [massive stock growth and drop], our criminal government unleashed COVID on the world and told us these were the “stay at home stocks.”

          There are components of his theory that ring true, but the cherry-picked examples and the strange conclusions of how points are connected definitely made it read like a conspiracy theorist.

          Despite that, one of the points he makes early on is to apologize to those he will hurt with his self-immolation, including witnesses and first responders. That fact alone gives me empathy for him. He truly believed his conclusions, and it drove him to this awful action.