Summary: Man drives burning truck through law office.
Though many of us could hazard a guess as to why, the motive of the man who drove his burning truck through the doors of a law firm is still unknown. 56-year-old Alan Boyd Lanier of Amelia Court House, Virginia, executed an arson-suicide that effectively took out Twiford’s Law Firm, though by an act of God, the other businesses in the same building were spared.
“After detectives examined the truck it was apparent that Lanier had also manufactured an explosive device that did not detonate,” said Currituck County Sheriff Susan Johnson. “Once the truck was cleared and removed from the building there were several propane tanks, 30 gallons of gas in the bed and ten gallons inside the cab of the truck as well as several propane tanks.”
The man’s intent seems clear enough. “It’s very unnerving,” said attorney Edward O’Neal to WTKR.com. “He got out of the truck in that parking lot and went back and lit the bales of hay that were in the back of the truck and they were flaming. The truck as fully engulfed and he got back in it and drove it into the building. It almost went completely through the building.”
Nevertheless, the last lawyer had tarried home by that time, and it seems the only life lost was Lanier’s.
