Man Critically Hurt in Explosion at Girlfriend’s

A 32-year-old man who had called a fire dispatcher Monday morning to threaten suicide was critically burned in an afternoon explosion after he doused his girlfriend’s Anaheim apartment with gasoline and then ignited it, authorities said.

Anaheim paramedics at the scene reported Kevin Jones of Garden Grove appeared to have suffered second- and third-degree burns over nearly all of his body, burns inside his mouth and throat from inhaling the fire and a broken neck from the force of the explosion, according to Battalion Chief Tom Vandiver.

Vandiver said investigators found a suicide note.

The blast rocked the Winston Isle apartments, 2544 W. Winston Road, about 12:30 p.m., authorities said. Jones was alone in the apartment, rented by Consetta DiPasqua.

Jones was ablaze and standing in a hallway when firefighters arrived, Vandiver said. Accompanied by another firefighter who doused flames from his path, paramedic Tony Peca pulled Jones out of the single-story apartment, the battalion chief said.

Paramedics laid Jones on the lawn, doused his flaming clothes with water, then applied a saline solution to his burns, Vandiver said.

A helicopter was summoned to transport Jones, but an ambulance arrived on the scene first and took him to UCI Medical Center, he said.

Two melted one-gallon plastic gasoline containers lay on the lawn outside the apartment as firefighters mopped up after the blaze.

Two gallons is “enough to burn the whole complex down,” Vandiver said. Investigators could not determine whether Jones had lit the flammable liquid with a match or lighter or whether fumes had been ignited by the arc of a flipped light switch, found in the “on” position, he said.

The apartment had all electric appliances and furnaces, Vandiver said, so no pilot light was involved.

DiPasqua, 29, summoned to the explosion scene by authorities, collapsed at the sight of her gutted apartment and was carried away to a police car by her brother, Peter.

According to DiPasqua’s family, Jones was a piano player who had recently quit a job and was upset because DiPasqua wanted to cool their relationship.

“I think he was under a lot of pressure,” said Peter DiPasqua, 25. “I guess he could only take so much.”

Jones had called a fire dispatcher Monday morning, threatening suicide, but he gave the dispatchers the wrong number and authorities could not reach him, Vandiver said.

About noon, Jones called Connie DiPasqua at work, threatening to kill himself, her brother said. Depressed, Connie DiPasqua went to her mother’s Anaheim home on her lunch break to talk about her concerns, and she was there when authorities called her with the news of the fire, Peter DiPasqua said.

At one point as firefighters battled the blaze, authorities saw what they believed to be vials of ether. Thinking they had encountered a narcotics lab that could cause further explosions, they ordered the apartment complex evacuated and called the bomb squad in, Vandiver said.

“When there’s an explosion like this, we suspect things liked freebasing (combining cocaine with ether) or PCP,” Vandiver said.

The vials turned out to contain shampoo, and no narcotics or paraphernalia were found, Vandiver said.

Sylvia Trujillo, 51, who lives in an apartment across a sidewalk from DiPasqua, said the explosion jolted the complex so badly she thought at first there had been an earthquake. She said she saw the curtains of DiPasqua’s apartment blow outside, apparently after the windows blew out, and after calling authorities, she and her niece tried to douse the flames with garden hoses.

Another resident was able to open the front door and saw a person inside but could not enter because of the heavy flames, Trujillo said.

Fire officials said the fire damage, estimated at $100,000 to the building and $25,000 to its contents, was confined to the one apartment.