Mr. David Shaul left his home in Dodge City, and somehow ended up in front of a fur store in Portland, Oregon. For reasons that remain unclear, he set himself on fire, screaming something about “There are animals dying! Animals dying!” KATU video lives here.
Passing motorist applies fire extinguisher to Mr. Shaul, after he set himself on fire and a Portland police officer had doused him with pepper spray.
At some point, the police showed up and tried to put out the fire.
The cops doused him with pepper spray. Apparently, the police use a lot of pepper spray in Portland, so much so that they need to carry fire extinguisher-sized tanks of it in their patrol cars. Police chief Rosie Sizer told reporters“I have never heard of a situation like this. To be confronted with someone fully engulfed in flames is something that is so unexpected and so outside the norm that you respond very instinctively. And in many, many ways, her acts were heroic.”
The officer’s acts were so heroic, in fact, that she immediately went on vacation and has not been publicly identified. Chief Sizer offered no explanation for why the department’s fire extinguishers look so much like the department’s cans of pepper spray, but did say that the officer was “heartsick” over the mistake. Moreover, she explained that the pepper spray was water-based, and so did not add to the conflagration. While that’s probably true, we suspect that it hurt like the dickens, although once Mr. Shaul was already on fire, the issue was probably moot. We wonder whether he might have survived his injuries if he had been extinguished immediately, instead of having to wait for a passing motorist with a real fire extinguisher.
The Oregonian tells us that the chief plans to look at ways to better distinguish items carried in the trunks of police cars.
Yah, that sounds like a good plan, all right.
Tags: Burning Man, Cops, Madame Nhu, Portland
[...] a curious coincidence, Multnomah County includes the city of Portland, Oregon. Long-time readers will recall that a police officer in Portland encountered Mr. David Shaul while he was on fire outside a [...]