Controversial “conspiracy theorist” Max Azzarello tried to self-immolate Friday night in a Manhattan park across the street from former President Donald Trump’s hush-money trial, dying hours later, police said.
A 37-year-old Florida man died from severe burns sustained after a nauseating self-immolation inside Collect Pond Park.
He threw a stack of pamphlets containing a link to a Substack newsletter into the air, then poured fuel on himself and lit a lighter in front of horrified witnesses.
The self-proclaimed “investigator” traveled to New York City from Florida in recent days without telling his family and has been protesting in front of the courthouse, bashing political leaders from both sides of the aisle.
“This extreme protest is meant to draw attention to an urgent and important discovery: that we are victims of a totalitarian fraud and that our own government (along with many of our allies) has committed an apocalyptic They are about to attack us with a fascist world coup.” Azzarello wrote part of a rambling manifesto on his Substack page.
After the self-immolation, police swarmed the scene as an ambulance was nearby and the man was taken to the burn unit of a nearby hospital in critical condition. However, according to police and officials, the man died around 10:30 p.m.
Azzarello was previously arrested three times in the Sunshine State in August last year on charges of disturbing the peace and criminal damage to property.
After his third arrest, Florida police noted he was suicidal and listed him as unemployed, according to a police report.
A witness who spoke with Azzarello and saw him set himself on fire minutes later recalled the horrifying scene in an interview Friday.
“He just stood there and a minute later he hit the ground. By the time the police arrived on the scene, all the fuel had burned off his body and his skin was showing,” said the 25-year-old startup founder. said William Scheffler. “He didn’t make much noise and was very quiet. Pretty scary.”
