Last edited Sun Apr 19, 2015, 05:47 AM - Edit history (1)
move on....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/new-jersey-man-identified-as-mall-fire-victim/2013/10/08/02e2a734-2fcb-11e3-bbed-a8a60c601153_story.html
a black guy who set himself on fire (like those Vietnam-era Buddhist monks)
The New Jersey man who died after setting himself ablaze on the National Mall in Washington had railed against the government and told a neighbor “America is falling apart.”
John Constantino “didn’t like the government for some reason,” neighbor Joe Horner told The Daily News. “He said they were a waste of time, effort and money,” Horner, 56, said. “He said to me, ‘They’re no good. They don’t look out for us and they don’t care about anything but their own pockets.’”
Horner spoke out after Constantino’s family lawyer issued a statement saying his dramatic death Friday “was not a political act or statement, but the result of his long battle with mental illness.”
Horner said he saw his 64-year-old friend on Thursday and he showed no signs of being insane. “He was his happy self,” said Horner, who lives on a few doors down from modest, two-story, book-filled townhouse in Mt. Laurel, N.J., that Constantino shared with his wife.
Constantino, a father of three grown children who once lived in Queens, was friendly, outgoing, and a member of the neighborhood association, neighbors said. “If you needed a helping hand, that guy would help you,” Horner said. “It breaks my heart that he did that. I would have done anything to help but I didn't know.”
A second neighbor who only identified himself as John echoed Horner, calling the dead man “a good friend, a good neighbor.”
Constantino’s kin declined to discuss their family tragedy. “I am not aware of any anti-government statements made by him or any ill will he may have had against the government,” Constantino family lawyer, Jeffrey Cox, said.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/mental-illness-made-man-burn-national-mall-family-article-1.1479401On edit: that was late 2013. The more recent mall suicide with apparent political motivation was April 11.
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