A story from earlier this week:

LEWISTON, Maine -- A Lewiston man who rolled a pig's head into a local mosque last summer, touching off tensions in minority communities in the city and beyond, shot and killed himself in a parking lot after a brief standoff with police, authorities said.

According to Lewiston police Sgt. Michael Whalen, 34-year-old Brent Matthews committed suicide after police tried to persuade him to put down a semiautomatic handgun, the Maine Sunday Telegram reported.

...Matthews had been charged with a misdemeanor count of desecrating a place of worship and pleaded not guilty. State prosecutors obtained a court order to keep him away from the mosque.

The Sun Journal of Lewiston reported that Matthews phoned 911 in distress at 8:14 a.m., according to police and that when officers arrived Matthews was outside his car and alone.

They tried speaking with him, but Matthews never responded. After just a few minutes, he raised a handgun to his head and fired once, the Lewiston newspaper reported....

He seemed like a jerk when the incident occurred, but now it seems as if he was just a messed-up guy. (It's possible that that was the case long before the pig's head incident.) And yet a few people called him a hero.

There's pretty much the reaction you'd expect at Free Republic:

... I kind of feel sorry for the guy, probably shouldn't have done that with the pig's head, but sometimes you have simply had enough of diversity.

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... it took all of 8 months for liberal Maineiancs to drive this man to desperation.

We should begin delivering live hogs to the premises of that mosque, letting them defecate all over the property.

Too bad he did not choose life and go to trial and contest the issue of whether Islam is a religion.

It is not a religion actually, but a mental illness of submission.

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Sounds like suicide-murder by a city after a making a false charge
to COMFORT murderous Islamonazis.

Calling Nifong. Your courtesy phone please. It's Maine calling.

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I'm all for diversity. One should own a variety of makes and models of firearms to protect oneself from Islamics.

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What in the hell is going on in Lewistown, Maine?

Bill Clinton is what is going on. He rewarded the Somali people for Black Hawk Down by brining 90,000 of those savages into America free and clear....

Always a pleasure to be enlighted by these folks, isn't it?

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(This story is not to be confused with the "ham sandwich" story that's been making the rounds, in two versions -- the accurate one and the parody version, which was taken seriously around the country, notably at Fox News. The lewiston Sun-Journal sorts it all out here, if you're interested.)