"Horrific agony" in Pierce County killings

By Jessica Blanchard, Jonathan Martin and Ray Rivera
Seattle Times staff reporters

STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES A Pierce County fire official sifts through the area where a car left the road and overturned in a field near Bonney Lake after driver Genaro Garcia set his family on fire early yesterday. Antigone "Mona" Allen, who died after the wreck, had decided a day earlier to return to Garcia.

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A day earlier, Antigone "Mona" Allen had decided to give her estranged boyfriend, Genaro Remigio Garcia, one more chance. She'd left him a month before, tired of the bruises and his controlling ways.

So when he pulled up at her mother's house in Parkland, Pierce County, late Tuesday night, 18-year-old Allen packed their three sleeping children in the back of his Lincoln Town Car, expecting to go home.

Garcia, 24, had another plan. As Allen nodded off, he stopped to fill up a gas can. He took a back road near Bonney Lake away from the Puyallup apartment they shared.

She awoke to see him snorting coke, something she'd never seen him do before. He pulled a .45-caliber pistol and pointed it at her head. He grabbed the gas can and splashed himself, Allen and their children — Christine, 2 ½, Kristian, 18 months, and Adam, 6 months — and flicked a lighter.

	Genaro Garcia had been arrested in June.

The car burst into flames, careened off the road and flipped over in a dark pasture. The children, trapped inside, died at the crash scene. Allen staggered from the wreckage, engulfed in flames. Garcia followed, also on fire, and began shooting at her as she screamed and ran across a field. Garcia walked and fired until the gun jammed and fell from his incinerated hands, according to police. He collapsed, and arrived dead at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Allen, who would have been 19 Saturday, died eight hours later, also at Harborview, after telling her story to rescuers and family, and giving funeral instructions for her children and Garcia.

The tragedy ended a tumultuous, three-year relationship that began when Allen and Garcia spotted each other in a Tacoma grocery.

Allen's sister, LaVeda Allen, said she helped her sister leave Garcia at least eight times over the past year, as her sister complained of being slapped and abandoned at times without a phone, car or money.

"All the signs were there," said LaVeda Allen, 23. "He didn't want her to have a phone, didn't want her to have friends, and didn't want her to communicate with her family."

How to help Contributions to cover funeral expenses for Antigone Allen and her three children can be made via The Allen Memorial fund at U.S. Bank branches in the Puget Sound region.

At least some of the incidences were reported to police, but Allen never sought a protective order, according to court records and family members. She also refused to help her mother press statutory-rape charges against Garcia for impregnating Allen when she was 15, LaVeda Allen said.

Her family, LaVeda Allen said, grew weary of Mona Allen's willingness to go back to Garcia. "We as a family probably didn't try as much as we should, because she went back and forth repeatedly," she said. "Maybe because we thought she was crying wolf."

Allen's stepfather, Levell Sandifer, said Allen's mother was too stunned to talk about her daughter or Garcia yesterday.

Woman begged for help

At the crash scene, nearby resident Lisa Hansen, who had been up late for her young son's slumber party, heard an explosion at 1 a.m. yesterday and looked out to see the car burning. After calling 911, she and one of her son's 13-year-old friends grabbed a sleeping bag and a jug of water and drove toward the fire, trying to locate the source of the screams in the unlighted field.

Hansen backed her car up and parked next to a gate. She finally saw Allen, trapped on the other side of a fence, stumbling toward her clad only in burned jeans, a bra, a shoe and the scorched remnants of her shirt.

"She was in horrific agony," Hansen said, and was begging for something to cool her off. Hansen tossed the water jug over the fence that separated them, but Allen's severe burns made it impossible for her to grasp it.

Hansen, unable to open the gate, couldn't retrieve the water jug. So Allen appealed to the 13-year-old boy, who had been sitting, horrified, in the car.

"I know I look scary, but I won't hurt you, just please help me," she pleaded.

The boy squeezed through the gate and retrieved the jug, which Hansen then held over the fence, letting some of the water drip down so Allen could drink.

Hansen said that Allen knew she was dying but refused to give up. "He got my three kids, but he ain't gonna get me," she said.

The burns to her face made talking difficult, but she was determined to tell Hansen what had happened to "her babies."

In the moments before ambulances arrived, Allen told her detail after horrifying detail: how Garcia had held a gun to her head, how she'd rolled down the window and screamed for help, and how Garcia had doused the family in gasoline and lighted them all on fire.

Hansen flagged down the first ambulance just as Garcia stumbled toward them, silhouetted by the fire from the overturned car. His clothes had completely burned off, Hansen said.

He collapsed along the roadway in front of an ambulance, and medics immediately started working on him.

Scrapes with the law

Antigone Allen dropped out of school at age 15 to have Christine, and did not have a high-school diploma. She had pleaded guilty to a juvenile misdemeanor charge of assault after hitting a fellow middle-school student, according to court records. At the time of her death, Allen was facing misdemeanor charges for a fight at a swap meet in July 2003.

According to LaVeda Allen, Garcia was a roofing contractor who came into the U.S. from Mexico. .

	ROD MAR / THE SEATTLE TIMES LaVeda Allen comforts her daughter Daijanelle at their Tacoma home yesterday after Allen's sister, niece and nephews were killed.

In June, the couple's quarrel drew police, when Garcia reported that his girlfriend had locked herself in their apartment, with a gun. A sheriff's deputy found Garcia standing outside. Allen was inside, looking out the window. When the officer summoned her, she came out limping. She told the officer that the couple had fought that morning and that Garcia had pushed her to the floor after she slapped him.

Allen said she'd taken the gun from Garcia's truck to keep him from doing something stupid.

Garcia was arrested and released the next day. At the time of Garcia's arrest, Allen told police that he had to go to California soon for a criminal proceeding, according to a complaint she filed with police. Police said yesterday they did not know what that proceeding was.

A neighbor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Allen and Garcia moved into the Puyallup apartment building in 2003. She stayed home with the kids and he worked construction, the man said.

The man and his wife looked after Allen and Garcia's children on a couple occasions. The "little girl, it was easy to make her laugh and she had a pretty little smile," the man said. One of her brothers was just starting to walk; the youngest was still an infant.

There were obvious problems in the home, but the man declined to elaborate.

"They were nice people, but don't get me wrong ... there were issues and their family life was less than ideal, that's for sure," he said.

Why did Allen go back the last time? Her sister says Allen, had few options. "She wanted to make things work for her family. It's hard to be 18 years old with no job, no resources and three kids."

Ray Rivera: 206-464-2926 or rayrivera@seattletimes.com

Seattle Times staff reporters Doug Merlino and Sara Jean Green contributed to this report.