And there were a number of other fire incidents over the long weekend, and one of the most disturbing happened in Belize City when a man tried to set himself on fire inside his parked vehicle on Pickstock Street. Once lit, he dashed out of the vehicle on fire and brave persons in the area used their clothing to try and put out the fire.
The victim survived and he is 31-year-old Haitian taxi man Estiverne Davidson.
Shortly before the incident, he'd told his 18-year-old girlfriend that he was overwhelmed with debt.
Here's more from Mortis:
Kenneth Mortis, Station Supervisor
"Saturday, a bizarre twist of events happened that initially we received the call for a vehicle fire whereby a Haitian guy, a Mr Davidson of 31-years-old, we pre-maturely got the information that he got burned trying to extinguish the fire and of course we figured well a normal everyday hero and he sustained burns to his body however in depth investigation on behalf of the team out there that also worked with neighbors and the public. The fire department out there learned that this gentleman actually he tried to take his life by igniting himself and this vehicle. Now, I must tell you that suicide attempts by fire is one of the worst ways to go. You will find yourself incurring fire burns to various parts of your body in varying degrees and you will find yourself in debt medical wise, the other flip side to that if you survive the attempted fire burn then your life expectancy is limited because unfortunately we do not have any institution that deals with these fire burns over a period of time, uh, all fire burn victims are shipped out of the country to neighboring countries that can deal with these fire burns I really don't know what Mr Davidson was thinking about. We all know that he mentioned to his girlfriend that he was experiencing heavy heavy financial debt, something that he figured he just couldn't take the burden on no more but truth be told Mr Davidson you just now officially wracked up more debt to your already extinguishing debt."
Davidson is a father of one.
