The Fourth of July holiday ended in a terrible tragedy after a young man launched a firework off the top of his head and instantly killed himself.

Authorities say that 22-year-old Devon Staples and his friends had been drinking and setting off fireworks Saturday night in the backyard of a friend's home in eastern Maine, said Stephen McCausland, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety.

At one point, Staples, who lived in a small city on the Canadian border called Calais, placed a reloadable fireworks mortar tube on his head and told his friends he was going to light it. That's when his friends urged him not to do it.

"Apparently, he thought that was a great idea," McCausland said, according to the Associated Press. "His friends they thought dissuaded him from doing it, and the next thing they knew, he ignited the fireworks and he was killed instantly."

The victim's brother, Cody Staples, 25, told the New York Daily News that Staples was holding a lighter and accidentally set off the firework. He added that he was a few feet away when his brother lit the firework on his head.

"There was no rushing him to the hospital. There was no Devon left when I got there," said Cody, who called the incident an accident. "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 had worked as a performer at Disney World as "Beauty and the Beast" character Gaston.

His mother, Kathleen Staples, said that her son launched the firecracker by accident while "he was goofing off."

"That would've been suicide. I can't see a happy boy wanting to destroy himself," she told WBZ NewsRadio 1030. "He believed it was a dud, he stuck it over his head and he was goofing off."

Staples' death marked the first fireworks fatality in Maine since the state repealed a 1949 law banning fireworks in January 2012.