Three children die in crash inferno

THREE children were killed and a woman critically injured in a fiery crash early yesterday in the US state of Washington after the woman’s boyfriend held them at gunpoint in the car and then doused them with gasoline and set them afire, authorities said.

The man, whom the woman had recently accused of assault, also died.

The 19-year-old woman was in critical condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle following the crash at an intersection near Bonney Lake, east of Tacoma, Pierce County sheriff’s Detective Ed Troyer said.

The grisly spectacle unfolded about 1am when a resident reported hearing a crash and seeing two adults completely on fire as they stumbled across the road.

Firefighters found the bodies of the children in the back of the overturned car, which was severely burned. The six-month-old boy, one-year-old boy and two-year-old girl were the children of either the man, the woman or both, said Det Troyer.

He said that the woman, who lives in Puyallup, filed an assault complaint in recent days, and a deputy was assigned to the case. However, the woman failed to follow through with her complaint.

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

The woman’s relatives indicated there had been “some unreported domestic violence” before she made the complaint, Det Troyer said.

The 24-year-old man was pronounced dead on arrival at Harborview.

At the scene, he was incoherent, but the woman managed to speak briefly, authorities said.

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