Renton woman behaved strangely before dying in duplex fire, neighbors say

It was about a month ago when some neighbors say they began to notice that something was wrong with Jasmin A. Lee, a 52-year-old Renton woman who died Monday night in a duplex fire after she reportedly chased a neighbor and her children with a machete and a knife.

Until recently, Lee was a solid tenant and a "kind and sweet" neighbor who lovingly tended her garden filled with bamboo, hostas and ivies, cared for her terrier and treated others with courtesy and respect, her landlord and neighbors said.

"She was really quiet, nice and sweet," said Anita Bradstreet, who rented the other side of the duplex Lee had lived in for the past four years.

According to Jim Brown, whose mother lives across the street from Lee, the woman was always a little odd — she physically lowered all the street signs in their neighborhood, for example — but until recently he had not thought of her as anything other than "a little weird, but nice."

In the past few weeks, however, he and some other neighbors became concerned.

Neighbor Xuan Vu said Lee began appearing on Vu's doorstep nightly around 10 p.m. wanting to chat about her homeland in Asia and gardening in her own yard at all hours.

Brown said she began doing martial-art dances in her front yard about two weeks ago.

Around the same time, he said, she kicked her beloved terrier out the door.

"She kicked him and his bed out into the street in the middle of the night, and it was barking all night and the police came and got it," Brown said. "Ever since then she's been doing her little dances."

Police had been to Lee's home in the 600 block of Index Place Northeast on two previous occasions, according to Renton Police Department spokeswoman Penny Bartley.

Bartley did not give additional details but said one of the calls was from a neighbor who reported seeing Lee with a knife and had concerns about her mental stability. Another, she said, was in response to a report of a loose animal.

On Monday evening, police were again called to the neighborhood when a 22-year-old woman reported that Lee had just chased her and her children with a machete and a knife.

Bartley said police arrived within moments to see Lee run into her home.

They were trying to coax her out, Bartley said, when "the house erupted in flames."

According to Bartley, fire investigators determined that Lee likely set the fire herself with gasoline.

Lee's name was not released Tuesday by police or the King County Medical Examiner's Office, but neighbors confirmed her identity. The cause of her death has not been released.

Several neighbors said they had never seen Lee entertain visitors and did not think Lee had family members living nearby.

"She seemed nice and harmless," Brown said. "It's kind of sad."

Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com