Man sets fire to woman, three children near Bonney Lake

By The Associated Press and Seattle Times staff

STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES A Pierce County fire official sifts through the remains of a vehicle that left the road and overturned in a field near Bonney Lake. Authorities say a man set fire to his estranged girlfriend and three small children while driving and crashed. All five died.

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The woman, Antigone Allen, 18, who recently filed an assault complaint against the man, survived for about nine hours at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle following the crash at an intersection near Bonney Lake, Pierce County 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.

Police found the bodies of a 6-month-old boy, a 1 1/2-year-old boy and a 2 1/2-year-old girl in the charred, overturned car. They were each the children of the man, 24, and Allen, who had a troubled relationship in the South Hill area of Puyallup, Troyer said.

The man was pronounced dead at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

The woman, had been living at her mother's home in Parkland, was able to give instructions for her funeral and those of the children before she died.

The grisly spectacle unfolded at about 1 a.m., when a Bonney Lake resident, called 911 to report hearing the car crash and seeing two adults engulfed in flames and stumbling across the road.

The man had had the children get into the back of the early 1990s-model sedan and the woman into the front passenger seat, then pulled a gun, doused them with gasoline and flicked a lighter to set them on fire as he drove.

Shortly afterward the car went off the road and overturned near the intersection of 256th and the Sumner-Buckley Highway.

Allen and the man both got out of the car and she ran about 100 feet while the man was shooting at her. It wasn't immediately known if any of the shots hit her. The man ran about 50 yards and collapsed in a ditch.

	KING TV Antigone Allen and daughter Christine.

The woman managed to go to a nearby neighbor for help and firefighters found the bodies of the children in the back of the car shortly after they arrived and sprayed down the wreckage.

A gun with at least one round missing was found in the field, Troyer said.

The woman's relatives indicated there had been "some unreported domestic violence" before she filed an assault complaint in recent days, and a deputy was assigned about two days ago when she failed to follow through, he said.

"They were in the process of getting back together or breaking up, off and on," he said.

It was not immediately known where the car had been before the crash, Troyer said.