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Maine man dies after setting off firework on his head

A 22-year-old man from Maine died Saturday after setting a mortar tube firework off on the top of his head, a state official said.

Devon Staples was drinking with his friends at a home on South Street in Calais, a small city on the Canadian border, at about 10 p.m. when the incident occurred, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety. Staples was killed instantly.

Staples placed a reloadable fireworks mortar tube on his head and told his friends he was going to light it, McCausland said. But his friends urged him to stop. The firework Staples was using is designed to launch the explosive out of a small tube into the air.

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''Apparently, he thought that was a great idea,'' McCausland said. ''His friends they thought dissuaded him from doing it, and the next thing they knew, he ignited the fireworks and he was killed instantly.''

Staples's brother Cody told the Daily News of New York that he was a few feet away when his brother lit the firework and was the first to come to his side after it exploded.

''There was no rushing him to the hospital. There was no Devon left when I got there,'' said 25-year-old Cody Staples, who called it an accident.

''Devon was not the kind of person who would do something stupid. He was the kind of person who would pretend to do something stupid to make people laugh,'' he said.

The incident is the first fireworks-related death since Maine made them legal in 2012, McCausland said.

Lawmakers had voted to repeal a 1949 law banning fireworks, reasoning the industry would create jobs and generate revenue.

State fire marshals were also investigating several other Fourth of July fireworks accidents involving injuries in Friendship, Jefferson, Lebanon and Woodstock. They said most of the accidents involved burns and eye injuries.

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In Montana on Saturday, a 32-year-old man was killed at a Billings home in a fireworks accident involving a mortar tube.

And in New Jersey, a 52-year-old man blew off a large piece of his left leg below the knee when he set off a tennis-ball sized firework in Leonia.


Adam Sennott can be reached at adam.sennott@globe.com. Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.