Last Updated on: 29th April 2015, 02:08 pm
What a horrible situation. A man set himself on fire. A police officer saw the burning man and rushed to help. She grabbed what she thought was a fire extinguisher out of her trunk. It wasn’t. It was pepper spray. I guess the fire extinguisher and pepper spray can look extremely similar. She unloaded it on poor Daniel Shaull, the burning fellow, to no avail, of course. They say it didn’t make the fire worse, as the spray was water-based, but it may have caused Schaull to run away when they tried to spray him with a real fire extinguisher. It appears that Schaull was trying to commit suicide. Unfortunately, it was a successful attempt.
I feel for the officer. I hope she doesn’t feel too guilty about what happened. And I hope this little incident makes police departments and others who carry both cans think about doing something to one of the cans to make them look different when you’re in a hurry, as you would be if you needed either pepper spray or a fire extinguisher
