Around 3 p.m. on Thursday April 14, a car burst into flames on Franklin Drive in Windham. Ryan Murphy, 20, had been doing cookies in his ’83 Monte Carlo in a nearby parking lot when he was pulled over by Detective Jim Boudreau.

“He was doing a little smoke-show behind the Hannaford Supermarket,” Boudreau said. “So I pulled him over on Franklin Drive and issued him a summons for unnecessary tire noise by acceleration. But it wasn’t till he tried to restart the car that it started smoking.”

After the car failed to start, Murphy got out of the car and opened the hood to see what the problem was. To his surprise, he found the engine in flames. The fire quickly consumed the car, from the engine blazing through the interior. The fire department arrived promptly on the scene and extinguished the fire. No one was harmed in the incident and Murphy, a student at Southern Maine Community College, was able to retrieve his bookbag from the trunk, intact.


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