Kirk Sayles of Florissant apparently blew up his house to end his own life.
Not Kirk Sayles.
From what TV news crews can tell, the 52-year-old from Florissant left a suicide note in a car outside his residence at 22 Flower Ridge Lane, poured gasoline all over the inside of his house, and lit it on fire.
Incredibly, the explosion knocked the house's foundation some six feet off its foundation, reports KMOV Channel 4, and melted siding and shattered windows of a neighbors house.
The blast also ruptured a natural gas line, which fed the flames for hours.
Again, this doesn't normally happen after a suicide.
According to the American Association of Suicidology, more than 38,000 people killed themselves in the U.S. in 2010 (the most recent stats we could find).
Of those:
- 50.5 percent used a firearm
- 24.7 percent did it by suffocation/hanging
- 17.2 percent poisoned themselves
- 1.8 percent cut themselves to death
- 1.1 drowned themselves
What's left is only five percent (or 2,000 people) across the whole country who used a miscellaneous method, including jumping off a bridge or building.
In other words, killing yourself by arson is so rare, there isn't even a category for it in major statistical studies.
KSDK Channel 5 pointed out in their coverage that they don't normally cover suicides, but did so in this case because the explosion endangered people in the neighborhood.
