This kid is either sick as hell or needs a real swift kick in his a$$. Check out this foolishness !!!
A Hempstead teenager tried to burn a 14-year-old boy alive — and nearly set an apartment building aflame — to settle an ongoing dispute in which the victim had accused the attacker of being a “snitch,” police said.
Matthew Taylor, 18, pleaded not guilty Thursday to first-degree attempted assault and other charges a day after police said he doused his schoolmate and a doorway with gasoline, contained in a 20-ounce Gatorade bottle, in an attempt to set the boy on fire.
Taylor, of 67 Terrace Ave., was not successful at starting a fire because he couldn’t get the accelerant ignited with a lighter and a road flare — but he could have burned the 60-unit building down if he had gotten just a spark, endangering the lives of up to 100 people, Nassau police said.
“Had this young man been successful in getting that flare to ignite, the fumes and the accelerant that was on the walls of the building, we could have experienced [Wednesday] huge fatalities,” said Det. Lt. Ray Cote, commander of the Third Squad detectives. “That amount of gasoline that was in there was certainly enough to set the apartment building on fire.”
Taylor, who police arrested shortly before 5 p.m. Wednesday at his home, also was charged with first-degree reckless endangerment, fourth-degree possession of a dangerous weapon, and endangering the welfare of a child.
The victim, whose name was not released, was treated at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola for chemical burns and released, Cote said.
“He was traumatized,” Cote said of the victim. “Obviously when someone gets gasoline on you and is then chasing you with a highway flare, you’ve got to think that you might die.”
Cote said the incident began after second period in a hallway of Hempstead High School, where the two teenagers had a fight at about 10 a.m., a skirmish for which the school suspended both of them.
Cote did not reveal the nature of the squabble except to say that the 14-year-old victim thought Taylor had “snitched” on the 14-year-old’s cousin.
“He felt that Mr. Taylor was not a respected member of the community,” Cote said.
Taylor and the victim live across the street from each other, and Taylor approached the victim’s building with a flare, a lighter and the gasoline-filled bottle, Cote said, finding the victim and dousing him with the incendiary liquid.
The victim ran inside the building and raced for his grandmother’s apartment and closed the door while pleading with his grandmother to call police.
Police said Taylor saturated the hallway floor and door frame of the apartment, and tried to light it with the flare.
At his arraignment in Hempstead court, Taylor was ordered held on $250,000 bail. He has not been in trouble with the law before, authorities said.
They need to keep this idiot behind bars !!!
Newsday
