A man from Staten Island, New York, sought to dispose of some of his presumably unneeded rubber sex toys using fire in his open backyard. Problems arose, however, when the fire got out of control, and he ended up burning not only his house and yard, but also at least two other neighborhood houses and even a couple of vehicles.
The man in question is 37-year-old Harry Torres, and the incident happened on the afternoon of April 14 on North Burgher Avenue. Torres initially set up a fire in his backyard to burn the aforementioned rubber sex toys, and for some reason, the fire spread to his neighbors. At around 3:20 PM, the firefighters of FDNY were able to respond to the 3-alarm fire emergency and quickly extinguished the fire before it spread to other houses.
Torres, thankfully, was quick to surrender to the authorities and admit his guilt. He was arrested on the scene and was promptly charged with two counts of arson, reckless endangerment, and criminal mischief. Luckily for Torres, no one was injured in the fire he caused, though Deputy Asst. Chief David Simms claimed that the fire still seemed suspicious.
“I started the fire. I was in the backyard at my house and I lit two sex toys on fire,” according to Harry Torres, based on the court documents, transcript courtesy of NBC.
The fire department was also quick to respond, for the record, and even managed to reach the scene within three minutes after the alarm. It’s just that the blaze spread so quickly, which was why the fire department’s assistant chief deemed the fire dubious.
It might’ve been possible that some of the sex toys contained lithium-ion batteries, which are highly flammable or even volatile. Meanwhile, Torres was more or less successful in his attempt at disposing of the rubber sex toys.
A Strange Way to Get Rid of the Toys
In addition to the fire department’s Deputy Assistant Chief’s suspicion on the matter, several reactions online were also weirded out by how the sex toys were disposed of. Fire certainly seemed excessive and even perhaps hate-driven, and the man could’ve just buried them in his backyard or a random spot in the woods if he wanted to discreetly get rid of them.
Some are worried that what Torres did could become a case study for lawmakers on the dangers of owning sex toys, which might lead to some overkill bills about sex toy ownership. Hence, Harry Torres’ attempt to get rid of sex toys became the butt of the jokes on certain comment threads online, though it’s an unfortunate hassle on the part of his neighbors. Hopefully, their property insurance covers burning sex toy damage.
“A backyard bonfire sure is a strange way to dispose of sex toys,” suggests Redditor Mythoclast
“Yeah yeah yeah, ha ha funny sex toy jokes. Let us not forget ourselves that this will 100% be used as a talking point against the safety of sextoys later,” worries Redditor Neokon
“Yes, setting things on fire has an alarming tendency to set other things on fire,” jokes Redditor MindWandererB
“There musta been a lot of friction. 👀 ☻️,” says Redditor bizoticallyyours83
