A Fourth of July celebration on Long Island ended in tragedy over the weekend when a man was killed by a firework in the backyard of his own home, authorities said. Suffolk County police reported that the victim, a 37-year-old resident of Central Islip, died Saturday night after a firework he was handling during the holiday gathering exploded without warning.
Investigators identified the man as Gabriel Ruiz-Urresto. According to police, he was lighting the firework in the backyard of his home at around 9:30 p.m. when the device detonated. Emergency responders who rushed to the scene were unable to save him, and he was pronounced dead at the property a short time later.
The Suffolk County Police Department's Homicide Squad took over the inquiry, a standard step in sudden and violent deaths even when they appear to be accidental. Detectives were working to establish exactly how the firework came to explode as it did, examining the device and gathering accounts from those who had been present at the celebration.
The gathering had been one of countless backyard parties held across the region on the night of July 4, as families marked the holiday with food, music and their own displays of fireworks. What began as a festive evening turned suddenly to horror for those on hand, who watched a routine part of the celebration go catastrophically wrong.
Consumer fireworks remain tightly restricted in New York, where many aerial and explosive devices are illegal for private use, and officials routinely warn that even products marketed as consumer-grade can cause devastating injuries when they malfunction or are set off at close range. Accidents of this kind tend to spike around Independence Day, when amateur displays are at their most common.
Emergency and fire officials across the country had spent the days before the holiday urging residents to leave large fireworks to trained professionals and to keep a safe distance from any device being lit. The death in Central Islip underscored, in the starkest possible terms, the risks that come with handling powerful pyrotechnics outside a controlled setting.
For the Central Islip community, the loss cast a shadow over a weekend meant for celebration, leaving neighbors and relatives to grapple with a sudden death in the midst of the festivities. As the investigation continued, police had not indicated that any criminality was suspected, describing the case as a tragic accident that claimed the life of a man in the place he called home.