Watch an off-duty Border Patrol agent ignite a wildfire by shooting a box of explosives to celebrate his baby boy
- A new video published by the Arizona Daily Star shows an off-duty Border Patrol agent starting a massive wildfire in Arizona last year by shooting a box of explosives to celebrate his baby son.
- The video shows the box in the middle of a field of long, dead grass suddenly exploding after what sounds like a gunshot.
- The surrounding grass then catches fire.
- Dennis Dickey, 37, admitted in September to starting the Sawmill Fire in April 2017, which scorched 47,000 acres and cost $8.2 million to put out.
The Arizona Daily Star published a video on Wednesday of an off-duty Border Patrol agent starting a massive wildfire in Arizona last year by shooting a box of explosives to celebrate his baby boy.
The video shows the box of explosives in the middle of a field of long, dead grass suddenly exploding after what sounds like a gunshot. The surrounding grass then catches fire before two blacked out images of people walk through the shot and someone yells, "Start packing it up!"
The Daily Star obtained the video from the US Forest Service through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Dennis Dickey, 37, admitted in September to starting the Sawmill Fire in April 2017, which scorched 47,000 acres and cost $8.2 million to put out, the Daily Star reported.
Watch the video below:
The off-duty agent shot the box of Tannerite, a legal explosive generally used for target practice, to celebrate finding out the gender of his unborn son, the Daily Star reported.
Dickey pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of causing a fire without a permit, and was sentenced to five years probation and agreed to pay $220,000 in restitution, the Daily Star reported.
"Blowing up Tannerite is its own YouTube genre," the Washington Post's Alex Horton wrote in May about unexplained explosions in Pennsylvania.
Horton linked to one YouTube video in which a group of individuals blew up a barn with 164 pounds of Tannerite. "Nobody cares. I blew it up because I can," the YouTube user wrote alongside the video.
Almost 85% of all wildfires in the US are caused by humans, according to the National Park Service, citing data from the US Forest Service from 2000 to 2017.
"Human-caused fires result from campfires left unattended, the burning of debris, negligently discarded cigarettes, and intentional acts of arson," the NPS wrote, not to mention shooting boxes of Tannerite with guns.