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27 Mar, 2012 19:08

'Chicken man' blows up his home to avoid foreclosure

'Chicken man' blows up his home to avoid foreclosure

After years of battling the City of Roswell, on Monday morning a Georgia man set his home on fire while still inside and the media caught it all on tape.

Andrew Wordes chose to end the ongoing feud by pouring gasoline all over his home rather than get evicted.Wordes who was known as “the chicken man,” raised chickens on his property since 2005 and had numerous run-ins with the law regarding city ordinances against raising the livestock.According to WSBTV.Com, Wordes spent three months in the Roswell Detention Center last year over his right to keep chickens.According to friends of “the chicken man,” the ongoing legal troubles took a toll on Wordes.“Andrew gave as good as he received, but there were a lot of citations and traffic stops on him,” said Alpharetta resident Cindy McEntire in in a phone interview with AJC.Last month in an interview with AJC, Wordes blamed the city for his financial woes that landed him in foreclosure. He had fallen behind on his mortgage due to the fines and jail time served for violating the city's property codes."I'm still trying to get this resolved, but it doesn't look like it's going to be happy," Wordes added in the same interview.According to Patti Silva, a friend of Wordes, he had already come up with a solution.“He planned this,” Silva said.Silva had supposed Wordes had become desperate after he learned approximately three weeks ago that his land was going to be seized.Silva knew the man for a few years and had assisted him through his legal troubles and in effort to prevent something horrible from happening she shared her concerns with local police.On Monday morning the 53 year-old called Mike Petchenik, a reporter with the local news, and asked him to come to his home. As the WSBTV truck rolled up, Fulton County Marshals were attempting to speak to Wordes through the front door in an attempt to remove him.Wordes refused to come out of his residence and denied entry to the officials. During the two hour stand-off Wordes was on the phone with Petchenik."I appreciate everything, brother. I appreciate everything you've done. I can't tell you what's going to happen, it ain't pretty, though," Petchenik said were the last words spoken to him by Wordes.Wordes had requested that Petchenik tell the Marshals to get off his property.“Once he advised us to leave his property, we retreated,” said Antonio Johnson, one of the Marshals on scene.“And that’s when the explosion happened.”The blast shook the household and the neighborhood.Among the remains of the home a charred body was found and now law enforcement is speculating they may have an ID on the body by the end of week.According to AJC.Com, Investigators discovered an additional device in the home which is thought to be a bomb.John Cherok, a neighbor who lives across the street told the AJC he had just seen his neighbor Monday morning.Over the weekend “the chicken man” helped clear Cherok’s lawn by picking tree limbs and piling them up on the curb.Monday they discussed whether the debris would be picked up by the local trash removal service."He said, ‘Today's going to be the day, anyway,' " Cherok told the AJC.“Obviously, he planned to end it this way," Cherok concluded.

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