Flaming Drunk Burns Down Church and Kills Pastor

A man with a violent criminal history managed to catch himself on fire. Instead of stopping, dropping and rolling, John Sterner ran into a church while he was ablaze and hugged the pastor there, killing him and setting the church on fire.

From FoxNews here:

A man ran into the rectory of an Episcopal church with his clothes on fire, causing a blaze that killed himself and the church’s pastor.

John Sterner, 56, was covered in a flammable substance when he entered the building Tuesday morning, which caused the fire to spread quickly. But the cause of the fire remained under investigation.

The pastor, the Rev. David Dingwall, died at a hospital after the fire. A woman who volunteers at the church was critically injured and was being treated at a burn center in Baltimore.

The Rev. Heather Cook of the Episcopal Diocese of Easton said the man later identified as Sterner “ran in screaming for help. He hugged one of the volunteers there, an adult female whose clothes were also ignited.”

Sterner has a lengthy criminal history that includes arrests for offenses including assault, breaking and entering and malicious destruction of property, and he’s been convicted of drug possession and possessing an open container of alcohol in public.

What a bizarre tragedy. I think Sterner was covered in Sterno.