On Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 2019, a 65-year-old male resident of Van Buren, Maine, made a distressing call to 911 to report that he had been shot. The man, Ronald Cyr, prompted a response from Van Buren police and medics who arrived at his home to find him with a gunshot wound. Despite receiving medical assistance at the scene, Cyr tragically succumbed to his injuries.
Upon investigating the circumstances of the shooting, officers made a startling discovery at Cyr's residence.
They found that the front door had been rigged with a homemade device designed to fire a handgun if anyone tried to enter. The presence of this and other "unknown devices" led investigators to call in the Maine State Police Bomb Squad to safely assess the scene. The extensive investigation that followed, involving local and state police, ultimately concluded that Cyr had been killed by the unintentional discharge of one of his own booby traps.
Family members shed light on what may have driven Cyr to take such extreme measures to protect his home. His siblings, Mark and Lorraine, stated that he had been the victim of repeated burglaries and had grown increasingly frustrated. They claimed items like tools and car painting supplies were often stolen, and that Cyr felt the police were not taking his complaints seriously, treating him "like he was senile". Fearful and feeling that authorities wouldn't help, he took matters into his own hands, first trying fences and security cameras before resorting to the fatal booby traps. There were no arrests or suspects in his death, as it was determined to be a tragic accident of his own making.
