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Man Killed By Fireworks Launched Off His Head Was Disney World's Gaston
A man who was killed in Maine on the Fourth of July when some fireworks exploded on his head was best known as the actor who played Gaston at Disney World.
Devon Staples, 22, died when a mortar tube on his head exploded. Previous reports said that he had tried to set the fireworks off on purpose. However, his brother Cody Staples, who watched the tragedy unfold, says that his brother was clowning around and never intended to set off the explosives. Staples did ignite them and was killed instantly in the explosion.
"There was no rushing him to the hospital. There was no Devon left when I got there," Cody Staples, 25, told the New York Daily News. "It was a freak accident … But Devon was not the kind of person who would do something stupid. He was the kind of person who would pretend to do something stupid to make people laugh."
Staples was beloved for making people laugh as Gaston at Disney World.
Staples was recently engaged. He was in Calais, Maine for the Fourth of July, but he was living in Orlando at the time of his death.
Here are a couple of his greatest hits:
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Eds. note: a previous version of this article erroneously identified him as the actor who challenged a child to a push-up contest in a video that went viral.
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