Durban -
A matric pupil who set fire to his house and threatened to slit his own throat reportedly claimed he was possessed by a demon.
Firefighters found the boy barricaded in his room at his eMkhomazi (Umkomaas) home on Sunday. He told them a demon named “Jennifer” had told him to burn his room black because she did not like the colour of the walls.
The division operations manager at the eManzimtoti fire station, Paul Audie, said when he and his crew arrived at the house, they found police outside who warned them that the teen was possessed and was holding a piece of glass to his neck.
“We asked them to call in a negotiator but one was not available,” Audie said.
Speaking to the Daily News at the fire station on Monday, Audie and two other firefighters shuddered as they recounted what they had seen and heard.
They said inside the home they found the teenager sitting on a partially burned chair in the corner of the room.
A neighbour had hosed much of the fire down but the bed was still smouldering. The windows had burst and the roof had caved in.
The “normal-looking” teenager had threatened to slit his throat with a piece of broken glass if they came in, the firemen said.
“He told us ‘Jennifer’ had followed him home and was telling him what to do. He was totally coherent but his whole body was shaking,” Audie said.
A bag of rice had been set alight in another room. The teenager told firefighters that he had been trying to prepare a meal for Jennifer because she said she was hungry.
“He was talking to us and then (to) Jennifer, speaking normally the whole time.
He was also making calls on his phone. He told us Jennifer was telling him to phone 666 so he could speak to Satan,” said Audie. In the soot, the teenager wrote “best day ever” with his finger.
When his mother and younger sister returned home from church he refused to let his mother into the room.
The mother had called in her congregation who sang and prayed trying to drive the “demon” out, said Audie.
“The pastor himself just stood perplexed.”
What was most shocking to the firefighters was that the teenager suffered no burns and had no difficulty breathing despite the extent of the fire, which had engulfed his entire room and his bed.
“Without our masks, we would have survived maybe three minutes in that house, but he was just sitting there, totally coherent, talking to us and didn’t cough once,” Audie said.
After about two hours, the teenager tried to cut the chair and the glass broke. “We jetted him with water and stormed him,” Audie said.
When the teen was brought outside, Audie and his team checked his vital signs and for drug use but found none.
“I could not understand how he hadn’t been incapacitated with all that smoke,” he said.
The teen was taken to hospital for assessment.
Police confirmed the incident but could not provide any further details.
When contacted by the Daily News, the teen’s distraught mother, a single parent, declined to go into the details of the incident, saying her priority was taking care of her “sick” son.
Said Audie: “In 20 years (of service) I have never experienced something like this. We went in there, each with our own beliefs and what we saw and heard left us stunned. The guys (other firefighters) said they could not sleep last night.”
Daily News