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Man dies after shooting firework from top of his head



A 22-year-old man has died after he set off a fireworks mortar from his head in Calais, Maine.

Devon Staples was celebrating the Fourth of July with friends when he placed a reloadable motor tube on his head, set it off and died instantly.

Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, told the Bangor Daily News that Mr Staples had been drinking alcohol and that explosion immediately caused a fatal head injury.

“When he suggested he was going to do this, his friends gathered around him and they thought they had convinced him not to do it,” he said.

However, the victim's brother Cody Staples refuted multiple reports, telling the New York Daily News that the incident was "a freak accident."

“It was a freak accident. Devon was not the kind of person who would do something stupid. He was the kind of person who would pretend to do something stupid to make people laugh.”

The incident marks the first reported death in a fireworks accidents in Maine since their legalisation in 2012.

According the Associated Press, state fire marshals were investigating several other fireworks accidents involving injuries in Friendship, Jefferson, Lebanon and Woodstock. Officials said the accidents mostly involved burns and minor eye injuries.

Can't Help It

Jul 6 2015, 09:44 PM

He wasn't thinking!