Police say that a Bronx man stabbed
his roommate in the head with a machete, then set himself and his apartment on fire. The 36-year-old man, whose named hasn't been released yet, didn't die in the fire however—a passerby saw him and saved his life before he burned to death. "I got scorched. He was still in flames. His clothes were burnt completely off of him," said good Samaritan Ken Banks.
Banks, a drummer with the R&B group The Rhythm Makers who was driving to practice when he saw the man on fire, said he was still carrying the machete with him when he grabbed his belt, the only part of his clothing which hadn't burnt off yet: "He had a machete. He dropped it when I was pulling him down. I was shocked."
Police say that the man hit his housemate in the head with the machete just before 9 a.m. this morning. He then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire—that fire also sparked a two-alarm blaze in his two-story brick single-family home on Southern Blvd. in the Bronx. It took firefighters nearly an hour to get the fire under control. The 51-year-old man who was stabbed is in stable condition at the hospital.
