CHERRY VALLEY, Ill. (AP) - A man shouting "freedom and liberty for all" set himself on fire in a suburban shopping mall Friday and hurled flaming objects at shoppers before he was subdued and taken to a hospital, officials and witnesses said.
Four other people also were injured.
Witnesses said the man, in his late 20s or early 30s, was yelling about freedom as he leaned from a mezzanine railing and threw burning packages onto the CherryVale Mall's center court. The fire was just outside the second-floor entrance to a department store in this Rockford suburb.
Two shoppers subdued him and extinguished the fire that burned him. Security guards put out the burning packages.
Mall employee Jeremy Wolf said the man appeared to have containers of cleaning chemicals strapped to his chest. He had stretched his leg over the railing as if to jump down to the center court, where hundreds of shoppers were waiting in line, Wolf said.
"I could literally see his face on fire," Wolf said.
The man, who was not carrying any identification, was taken to Rockford's OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center and was to be transferred to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Saint Anthony spokesman Gregory Alford said. He had no information on the man's condition; earlier, a dispatch supervisor said the man's burns did not appear to be life-threatening.
Two men who grabbed the man were treated for burns on their hands, and a woman was treated for smoke inhalation, Alford said. A 67-year-old woman remained at the hospital with difficulty breathing but was expected to be released.
Cherry Valley police were at the scene and unavailable for comment immediately Friday.
The mall closed its center court area after the incident. Managers were unavailable to say when it would reopen.
Was it our own FREEDOMNEWS?
I see the militia was on duty at the mall. The security guards just came along afterwards to help clean up the mess.
;p
It just goes to show what your mother taught you is still true: Don't stand to close to a burning man.
Anyone check if a LewRockwell.com loon columnist is missing ?