SEATTLE - A man doused his girlfriend and three small children with gasoline inside a car and set them on fire early Wednesday as he drove, authorities said. All five died after the car crashed in flames.
Residents reported hearing the crash and seeing two adults engulfed in flames, stumbling across a road near Bonny Lake, a small town east of Tacoma.
Antigone Monique Allen, 18, who had recently filed an assault complaint against the 24-year-old man, survived for about nine hours at a Seattle hospital, sheriff's Detective Ed Troyer said. She managed to tell investigators what happened before she died.
"She was very brave and talked to detectives this morning," Troyer said.
The man, whose identity had not been verified, was incoherent at the scene and died before reaching the hospital, Troyer said.
Allen told police the man pulled a gun after he and the others got into the car, then doused them with gasoline and set them ablaze with a lighter as he drove, Troyer said.
After the crash, the man fired four or five shots at Allen as she ran into a pasture; an autopsy will be needed to determine if the shots hit her, Troyer said.
Lisa Hansen, who lives nearby, said she heard the crash and drove down the road to see if she could help. She and a friend of her sons heard a voice in the pasture screaming: "Help! Help! Help me, please!"
They saw the woman standing, with her shirt burned off, but Hansen could not get to her because an electrified horse fence was between them. According to Hansen, the woman was screaming in pain, saying, "He did it! He did this on purpose!"
Firefighters found the bodies of the children — a 6-month-old boy, 1 1/2-year-old boy and 2 1/2-year-old girl — in the back of the burned car. Allen and the man apparently were parents of one or more of the children, but authorities had not determined the exact relationships, Troyer said.
Troyer said Allen had recently filed an assault complaint, and a deputy was assigned to the case, but the woman failed to follow through.
"They were in the process of getting back together or breaking up, off and on," the detective said. The woman's relatives indicated there had been "some unreported domestic violence," Troyer said.
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