Man sets ex-girlfriend's house on fire. Dances on roof while it burns

quote:

---

An Indianapolis man is in police custody after a bizarre standoff during which he barricaded himself in his ex-girlfriend’s house, set it on fire, and attempted to dance on the roof until he died.

---

quote:

---

Police arrived on the scene to find Russ “sitting in a chair in the driveway holding a knife.” Upon seeing them, he ran into the house, allegedly set it on fire, and then reappeared on the roof, where he proceeded to do a Phyrrhic victory dance “with smoke and flames billowing behind him.” The police have yet to confirm whether Russ started the fire, but my detective skills tell me it would be an awfully big coincidence if a fire had just happened to start at the moment Russ decided to destroy all of his ex-girlfriend’s things.

The police shot Russ with rubber bullets and a taser until they subdued him, at which point they rescued him from his dangerous perch and brought him to a mental hospital for evaluation. “Had we not made that decision at the time he probably would have succumbed to smoke inhalation or much less burned up,” a police officer who’d done something right for a change told the news station. “I can say that it probably saved his life.”

---