A man identified as Maxwell Azzarello in his mid-30s set himself on fire outside the Manhattan courthouse premises where the former US president Donald Trump’s hush money trial was commencing. The incident happened at around 13:30 local time when the emergency helpline 911 received a phone call.
After the unforeseen incident, the fire safety commissioner Laura Kavanagh said that the victim was taken to a burn unit at Weill Cornell Medical Centre sustaining severe injuries. A lot of reporters who were lined up in front of the New York high court as part of the former president's trial have recorded the unfortunate incident on their cameras.
As per a report from Reuters, the victim was not targeting Trump through his public outplay but was blaming the corrupted system of politics and US politicians.
The victim before setting himself on fire was seen throwing propaganda pamphlets from his backpack that read titles like “The True History of the World and the dirty secrets of our Rotten World”.
The man originally from Florida, travelled to New York about two weeks back without his family’s knowledge. He calls himself an ‘investigative researcher’ who wrote on the atrocities of government and how people are being fooled into a ‘fascist con’. He describes his act as an ‘act of revolution’ publishing through his website the ‘Ponzi papers’.
Even though he refers to himself as an ‘investigative researcher’ his ideas garnered him as a ‘conspiracist’ evenly displayed through an Instagram post which was published a month ago.
Before the blazing incident, he wrote a 2,700 manifesto on Substrack, (an American online platform) that reads “My name is Max Azzarello, and I am an investigative researcher who has set himself on fire outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan. This extreme act of protest is to draw attention to an urgent and important discovery: We are victims of a totalitarian con, and our government (along with many other allies) is about to hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup”.
The man also has several unpronounced incidents recorded in his name. He was arrested for his violent outbreak on August 19, 2023, for throwing a wine glass on the hanged autograph of Bill Clinton. He was noted for exhibiting a violent disposition by the police
The New York police department later confirmed his death on Saturday succumbing to burn injuries.
