It was approximately 12:20 pm at Ellipse park downtown Washington, D.C not far from the White House when an unidentified man set himself on fire in front of sightseers.
“We saw this man on the Ellipse, he starts running, and then we saw him covered in flames.” Eye witness 17-year-old Alina Berzins said.
“He started to walk” and then “cops started coming to the area and he collapsed,” Berzins said. The fire then was extinguished.
Secret Service spokesman Jeffrey Adams said in a statement that the agency’s Uniformed Division Officers “responded in seconds” after the “male individual lit himself on fire.” Officers then began administering first aid to the man.
@FoxNews Video of the person that was literally engulfed in flames on the #WhiteHouse lawn. Unbelievable pic.twitter.com/4IS37Rndme
— Krisjan Berzins (@KrisjanBerzins) May 29, 2019
“The individual is being transported to a local hospital,” Adams added.
Berzin says other passerby’s in the area were stunned by the sight.
Berzins’ father posted on Twitter a video that his daughter took of the incident.