Man kills himself exploding fireworks off his... head

A 22-year-old man has died after he set off a fireworks mortar from his head in Calais, Maine.
Devon Staples was celebrating the Fourth of July with friends when he placed a reloadable motor tube on his head, set it off and died instantly.
Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, told the Bangor Daily News that Mr Staples had been drinking alcohol and that explosion immediately caused a fatal head injury.
"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."
“When he suggested he was going to do this, his friends gathered around him and they thought they had convinced him not to do it,” he said.
Staples and his friends had been setting off fireworks on Saturday night in the backyard of a friend's home in eastern Maine, said Stephen McCausland, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety.
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.
However, the victim's brother Cody Staples refuted multiple reports, telling the New York Daily News that the incident was "a freak accident."
“It was a freak 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.”
The incident marks the first reported death in a fireworks accidents in Maine since their legalisation in 2012.