HOBOKEN, N.J. – A homeless man set himself on fire in the middle of a city street near where hundreds of revelers were hopping bar to bar for an annual St. Patrick's pub crawl on Saturday night, police said.
Hoboken police received a call about 11 p.m. that a man was trying to set himself on fire and found him with is jacket ablaze, Chief Kenneth Ferrante told NJ.com. Officers shouted for him to get to the ground so they could extinguish it, but he refused.
Once the fire spread to his skin, the man started screaming and officers were able to push him to the ground to put out the blaze, Ferrante said. The man was not seriously injured.
An annual St. Patrick's Day bar crawl had started at 11 a.m., drawing hundreds of partiers to 25 bars in the small city across the Hudson River from New York.
Police did not release details on what preceded the incident.
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