Man Dances Around Burning Truck, Taunts Calif. Firefighters

A man with a can of gasoline danced around a burning pickup truck on Bay Bridge in Oakland, laughing and taunting firefighters before being subdued.

Source San Francisco Chronicle

June 20, 2014

June 19--OAKLAND -- All lanes of the westbound Bay Bridge approach were reopened before 9 a.m. Thursday -- and one man was in custody -- after a pickup truck burned just past the toll booths, the California Highway Patrol said.

Witnesses reported a man dancing with a can of gasoline around a white pickup truck and taunting firefighters around 8:17 a.m. Authorities subdued the man and took him into custody before extinguishing the flames around 8:35 a.m.

"Whether he started it or not, I don't know. We'll have to investigate," said CHP Officer Kevin Bartlett.

No one was injured, authorities said.

"I saw a man dancing with a can of gasoline and laughing," one witness told The Chronicle. "He was laughing and taunting firefighters. It was chaos. They didn't know what to do."

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky