Man tries to set himself on fire outside White House

Post Reply New Topic

The Secret Service responded Friday after a man lit himself on fire outside the White House.

The man was riding an “electronic wheelchair-type scooter” when he set his jacket on fire while sitting on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House grounds, the agency said. Uniformed officers “immediately responded, extinguished the fire and rendered first aid.”

The man was later sent to a local hospital with “what appears to be non-life threatening injuries,” the Secret Service

Roger Allen LaPorte (July 16, 1943 – November 10, 1965) is best known as a protester of the Vietnam War who set himself on fire in front of the United Nations building in New York City on November 9, 1965, to protest the United States involvement in the war. A former seminarian, he was a 22-year-old member of the Catholic Worker Movement at the time of his death.

On June 11, 1963 Thích Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk burned himself to death at a busy Saigon road intersection. Thích Quảng Đức was protesting the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam's Ngô Đình Diệm administration. Photos of his self-immolation were circulated widely across the world and brought attention to the policies of the Diệm regime.

On March 16, 1965 Alice Herz, an 82-year-old pacifist, immolated herself on a Detroit street corner in protest of the escalating Vietnam War. A man and his two boys were driving by and saw her burning and put out the flames. She died of her wounds ten days later.

On November 2, 1965, Norman Morrison doused himself in kerosene and set himself on fire below Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's Pentagon office.