Did they push him too far?

Tonight a Roswell man is dead - apparently of his own hand - and his home is in shambles following an explosion. The victim, age 53, faced eviction from his home. Investigators surmise than rather than face the loss of his home and the daunting task of starting over, he doused the structure with gasoline and then ignited it. Looking back at the circumstances that led up to today's tragic events, I can only wonder if city officials, in their efforts to enforce the law, pushed the man nicknamed "Chicken Man" too far and the only way he knew to push back was to destroy the house and end his life? Consider these facts:

1. The man, who raised chicken on his property, had recently been jailed due to violating what officials called "various property codes". Apparently that following a neighbor's complaint about the chickens.

2. While he was incarcerated, he fell behind on his mortgage payment and had been struggling to bring payments current since his release. In an interview last month with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution he was quoted as saying "I'm still trying to get this resolved, but it doesn't look like it's going to be happy".

Although I'm not an expert in the field, I can imagine that the "Chicken Man" was under considerable stress knowing he was about to lose his home and, this morning, when Fulton County Marshal's arrived at the house shortly before 11 a.m., he couldn't take anymore and decided to end it once and for all. Moments before igniting the house, he talked with a reporter for WSB television and thanked him for all that he had done. He ended the conversation with "I can't tell you what's going to happen . . . it ain't pretty though".

Until next time . . .