The journey that ended with a person setting himself on fireplace on Friday exterior the Manhattan courthouse the place Donald J. Trump was being tried appeared to have begun in Florida, with a collection 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, and he was taken to a hospital burn unit, gravely injured. He died on Friday evening.
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 more in-depth have a look at the trail the person had traveled to this second of self-destruction revealed a current spiral into volatility, one marked by a worldview that had develop into more and more complicated and disjointed — and seemed to be unattached to any political social gathering. His social media postings and arrest data recommend the immolation stemmed as a substitute from a spot of conspiracy theories and paranoia.
Till final summer season, Mr. Azzarello appeared to have lived a comparatively quiet life. After highschool, the place he was a member of a bowling workforce, he graduated from the College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009, with levels in anthropology and public coverage.
As a scholar at Rutgers College in New Brunswick, N.J., the place he obtained a grasp’s diploma in metropolis and regional planning in 2012, he was identified for leaving supportive Submit-it notes for classmates within the hallways and for his karaoke performances of Frank Sinatra and Disney tunes, mentioned a former classmate, Katie Brennan.
“He was tremendous interested in social justice and the best way issues ‘might’ be,” Ms. Brennan mentioned. “He was inventive and adventurous.”
He started a profession by which, in response to his LinkedIn profile, he moved amongst jobs in advertising and marketing, gross sales and expertise. In 2013, he labored on the marketing campaign of Consultant Tom Suozzi of Lengthy Island, who was then operating for Nassau County government.
An previous buddy from highschool, Steven Waldman, known as Mr. Azzarello one of many smartest individuals he knew.
“He was a great buddy and particular person and cared in regards to the world,” he mentioned.
However there was trigger for concern, too.
By final 12 months, he had apparently settled in St. Augustine, the place he lived in a modest house close to the Matanzas River in that historic metropolis. He was a nice if generally peculiar neighbor.
“An especially good particular person,” mentioned Larry Altman, the property supervisor at his house constructing, who added: “He had political opinions that I might not take into account 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 mentioned.
“For those who met Max, he’d shake your hand, and also you’d have a pleasant dialog,” he mentioned. “He’d deal with you with respect.”
He was clearly deeply affected by the lack of his mom, nonetheless. 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 energy, dignity and spirit by way of 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 mentioned. “They have been shut, they usually had a great relationship. He was heartbroken.”
By the next 12 months, 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 12 months, he tagged Ms. Brennan and several other others to verify that they had seen one thing he had written. She described it as a “manifesto” and known as him instantly and tried to intervene. Ultimately she wrote to one among his relations to ensure that they have been conscious that he was in disaster, she mentioned.
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 acquired have 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 mentioned. He admitted what he had achieved to officers, the police mentioned. The episode was most certainly written off as one man’s unhealthy evening.
Two days later, he was again, standing exterior the lodge in simply his underwear, ranting and cursing right into a bullhorn, the police mentioned. And simply three days after that, he vandalized an indication exterior a close-by United Approach workplace earlier than climbing into the mattress of a stranger’s truck and rifling its contents, the police mentioned.
All these occasions performed out inside strolling distance of the house the place even his most far-afield views had solely lately 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 overall complacency of the general public. They espoused basic anti-government sentiment however didn’t appear directed at a discernible political social gathering.
“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 12 months earlier — “gracious and heat, foolish and catty, compassionate and supportive” — and their time collectively appeared to have disappeared.
His best vexation seemed to be cryptocurrency, which he solid as a menace 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 option to the operating sideshow exterior the downtown prison courthouse.
The world he selected, Acquire 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 gang within the park had thinned. At about 1:35 p.m., individuals started to scream. A blur adopted: a person on fireplace, brilliant flames licking his clothes and hair; officers scrambling over barricades; a departing ambulance.
His oldest pals have been left struggling to make sense of this act.
“He was variety and a delicate soul,” mentioned Carol Waldman, the mom of his childhood buddy. “An actual fantastic, terrific younger man. Who had his entire 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.