"I Can't Stop!"

Comedian severely burned

An explosion rocked his bedroom, and black Comedian Richard Pryor was engulfed in flames. Hearing his screams, his maid summoned his aunt Jenny, who rushed to his room and smothered the blaze with bedclothes. In shock, Pryor bolted from the house in the Los Angeles suburb of Northridge and rushed into the street. When police arrived with an ambulance, he was still running. "I can't stop!" he shouted. "I'll die if I stop!" His polyester shirt had melted onto his arms and chest, and he suffered third-degree burns from the waist up. At week's end he was still on the critical list at Sherman Oaks Community Hospital.

The Los Angeles police say Pryor told them that the accident occurred while he was "free-basing" cocaine. This newly fashionable practice involves purifying the coke by mixing it with highly flammable ether, which, when it evaporates, leaves coke crystals that burn with a steady flame and are smoked through a water pipe.

Pryor's lawyer later claimed that the accident occurred when Pryor started to light a cigarette with his butane lighter while holding a glass of rum.

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