At a nondescript group home just off of Buffalo Road in New Windsor, a client, 29-year-old David Lee Fisher, became a fugitive after acting out with potentially deadly force.
When staff members denied his request to obtain a game from the office, initially he started banging his head and knee through the walls.
Senior Deputy State Fire Marshal Bruce Bouch says then things turned criminal.
"We had a gentleman in a group home that initially started a small fire at a door where employees were located on the other side," said Bouch.
According to charging documents, Fisher used spray cologne and a lighter to fashion a torch he used to try to burn the door to the office and when that didn't work, he grabbed a fire extinguisher and began discharging its chemicals under the door.
"He then took off and ran into the woods to which then the first responding officers were from the Carroll County Sheriff's Office and they were able to easily apprehend him and bring him in for questioning," said Bouch.
Fisher would later tell investigators he ran because he was "scared as hell" after he alleges one of the staff members threatened to get her brother to kill him.
Fisher also told detectives he had skipped taking his medication for two weeks because he didn't want to sleep and it made him feel like a “lab rat”.
"He was taken to Carroll Hospital Center for an emergency petition for evaluation and then, subsequently, picked up by the Carroll County Sheriff's Office and detained and taken to the Carroll County Detention Center," said Bouch.
Fisher now faces a series of charges including arson, assault and reckless endangerment.
Paramedics transported a total of four people who had inhaled the powder from the extinguisher to a local hospital, and all of them have been treated and released.
