July 4th prank turns deadly.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: A former Disney employee who played the “Beauty and the Beast” character Gaston was killed during a fireworks mishap on July 4, the day the United States celebrates its independence.
Twenty-two-year-old Devon Staples died instantly when he put a fireworks mortar on his head and set it off, said Maine Public Safety Spokesperson Steve McCausland.
McCausland says Staples had been drinking with friends at a home on South Street in Calais Saturday night. The incident occurred at approximately 10 p.m.
“It was a misfire and it was an explosion, and that’s pretty much all that I remember until I’m holding my dead brother in my arms,” Christopher Staples, 24, told the Boston Herald. “No one saw him light it. We’re thinking he was just waving his lighter around just joking and he might have caught part of it and just lit it wrong. The pressure from the explosion that was supposed to be 50 feet in the air, exploded directly above his head. It did not take it off. It made a ‘whump’ sound, like a failed explosion,” he continued.
Staple’s mother, Kathleen, is convinced her son would never have placed the firecracker on his head if he thought it was a live explosive.
“That would’ve been suicide. I can’t see a happy boy wanting to destroy himself,” she told WBZ NewsRadio 1030. “He believed it was a dud, he stuck it over his head and he was goofing off.”
Officials say this is the first death attributed to fireworks since Maine legalized them two years ago, according to local NBC affiliate WCSH.