Man Starts Fire In Yard, Clobbers Firefighter With Shovel For Trying To Put It Out

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If you’re most people, when a firefighter shows up to extinguish a blaze on your property, your first instinct would be to thanks them — not to hit them with a shovel. It just goes to show that 44-year-old Floridian Gregory Sean Turner is not most people. Turner was arrested earlier this week on charges of Aggravated Battery on a Firefighter with a Deadly Weapon (Shovel) and Preventing or Obstructing Extinguishment of a Fire. That’s a rap sheet we’d really like to think is unique, but being that this is Florida…we just can’t assume that’s the case.

When firefighters arrived at Turner’s residence, they were confronted with an eight-foot-wide blaze fueled by mattress springs, a ceiling fan, and a variety of other home appliances — none of which you are generally allowed to burn in a massive bonfire in your backyard. Apparently, Turner missed that memo, and when firefighters began working to douse the blaze, Turner tried to fend them off, screaming profanities and swinging a shovel, demanding the firefighters leave his property. Which, to be fair, is generally a pretty good way to scare someone off.

Unfortunately for Turner, firefighters are hade of a little sterner stuff than most folks, being that they make a living running into burning buildings, a career that makes one kind of hard to intimidate. Also, they have quite powerful hoses, which, feeling threatened by Turner’s…well, threats, they turned on the shovel wielding homeowner. Whom, it turns out, they had underestimated. Apparently, spraying Turner with a hose only upset him, and he got up and promptly crowned one firefighter with his shovel, resulting in his being Tasered and subsequently arrested.

(via WWSB)

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