The journey that ended with a person setting himself on hearth on Friday exterior the Manhattan courthouse the place Donald J. Trump was being tried appeared to have begun in Florida, with a sequence of more and more weird outbursts.
Standing within the afternoon chill, the person, Max Azzarello, 37, of St. Augustine, Fla., threw pamphlets into the air earlier than dousing himself with an accelerant and setting his physique ablaze. The police hurried to extinguish the flames, however officers stated his accidents had been grave, and he was being handled at a hospital burn unit.
The hearth only a block or two from the courthouse appeared calculated to attract widespread consideration, horrifying bystanders and briefly overshadowing the momentous trial of a former president.
However a better have a look at the trail the person had traveled to this second of self-destruction revealed a latest spiral into volatility, one marked by a worldview that had develop into more and more complicated and disjointed — and gave the impression to be unattached to any political get together. His social media postings and arrest data counsel the immolation stemmed as a substitute from a spot of conspiracy theories and paranoia.
Till final summer time, Mr. Azzarello appeared to have lived a comparatively quiet life. After highschool, the place he was a member of a bowling staff, he graduated from the College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009, with levels in anthropology and public coverage.
As a pupil at Rutgers College in New Brunswick, N.J., the place he acquired a grasp’s diploma in metropolis and regional planning in 2012, he was recognized for leaving supportive Put up-it notes for classmates within the hallways and for his karaoke performances of Frank Sinatra and Disney tunes, stated a former classmate, Katie Brennan.
“He was tremendous inquisitive about social justice and the way in which issues ‘might’ be,” Ms. Brennan stated. “He was inventive and adventurous.”
He started a profession wherein, in response to his LinkedIn profile, he moved amongst jobs in advertising, gross sales and know-how. In 2013, he labored on the marketing campaign of Consultant Tom Suozzi of Lengthy Island, who was then working for Nassau County govt.
An previous pal from highschool, Steven Waldman, known as Mr. Azzarello one of many smartest individuals he knew.
“He was a superb pal and particular person and cared concerning the world,” he stated.
However there was trigger for concern, too.
By final yr, he had apparently settled in St. Augustine, the place he lived in a modest condominium close to the Matanzas River in that historic metropolis. He was a pleasing if generally peculiar neighbor.
“A particularly good particular person,” stated Larry Altman, the property supervisor at his condominium constructing, who added: “He had political beliefs that I might not think about mainstream. He known as our authorities and the world authorities a Ponzi scheme.”
However there have been no indicators that he was harboring an urge to hurt himself, Mr. Altman stated.
“For those who met Max, he’d shake your hand, and also you’d have a pleasant dialog,” he stated. “He’d deal with you with respect.”
He was clearly deeply affected by the lack of his mom, nevertheless. Elizabeth Azzarello died on April 6, 2022, close to Sea Cliff, N.Y., on Lengthy Island, the place she had fought pulmonary illness, Mr. Azzarello wrote on Instagram in April 2022.
“I’m immensely proud to say that she navigated the terrible challenges of this illness with power, dignity and spirit by the very finish,” he wrote.
After this loss, his previous pals noticed a change. “That was across the time when he grew to become extra outspoken,” Mr. Waldman stated. “They had been shut, they usually had a superb relationship. He was heartbroken.”
By the next yr, the readability Mr. Azzarello had proven in writing of his grief was gone, and a troubled picture emerged.
In March 2023, he listed his career on LinkedIn as “Analysis Investigator,” self-employed. In June of that yr, he tagged Ms. Brennan and a number of other others to verify they’d seen one thing he had written. She described it as a “manifesto” and known as him instantly and tried to intervene. Finally she wrote to one in all his relations to make it possible for they had been conscious that he was in disaster, she stated.
About 5 months later, in early August 2023, he posted on Fb about visiting a psychological well being remedy facility: “Three days within the psych ward, and all I bought had been my new favourite socks.”
Days later, in picturesque St. Augustine, he went for dinner on the Casa Monica Resort on Cordova Avenue. Afterward, Mr. Azzarello walked into the foyer, approached an autograph left by former President Invoice Clinton, who had signed the wall a number of years earlier, and threw a glass of wine at it, the police stated. He admitted what he had accomplished to officers, the police stated. The episode was probably written off as one man’s dangerous night time.
Two days later, he was again, standing exterior the lodge in simply his underwear, ranting and cursing right into a bullhorn, the police stated. And simply three days after that, he vandalized an indication exterior a close-by United Manner workplace earlier than climbing into the mattress of a stranger’s truck and rifling its contents, the police stated.
All these occasions performed out inside strolling distance of the condominium the place even his most far-afield views had solely not too long ago been delivered politely.
Within the months that adopted, Mr. Azzarello promoted his disjointed preoccupations in a doc he posted on Fb. The pages attacked fascism and the final complacency of the general public. They espoused common anti-government sentiment however didn’t appear directed at a discernible political get together.
“Like frogs in water coming to a boil, the general public didn’t discover the rotten reality behind the phantasm of freedom,” the writings state. The person who had written fondly of his mom only a yr earlier — “gracious and heat, foolish and catty, compassionate and supportive” — and their time collectively appeared to have disappeared.
His best vexation gave the impression to be cryptocurrency, which he solid as a risk to humanity.
It was unclear when he arrived in New York, taking a room on the Soho 54 Resort on Watts Avenue in Decrease Manhattan and making his technique to the working sideshow exterior the downtown prison courthouse.
The world he selected, Gather Pond Park, has been an on-and-off stage for supporters and opponents of Mr. Trump for months. Mr. Azzarello was there by Thursday, holding an indication and talking in ways in which, maybe weird elsewhere, slot in with the disparate voices of the park.
On Friday, the group within the park had thinned. At about 1:35 p.m., individuals started to scream. A blur adopted: a person on hearth, brilliant flames licking his clothes and hair; officers scrambling over barricades; a departing ambulance.
His oldest pals had been left struggling to make sense of this act.
“He was form and a delicate soul,” stated Mrs. Waldman, the mom of his childhood pal. “An actual fantastic, terrific younger man. Who had his complete life forward of him.”
Nate Schweber, Jan Ransom, Stefanos Chen, Nichole Manna, Nicholas Fandos, Chelsia Rose Marcius and Claire Fahy contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed analysis.
