Two Women Take Lives by Setting Selves Afire

A woman who set herself afire in a Highland Park street early Saturday morning died Sunday of massive burns, authorities said.

Only hours after the incident that led to the death of Louisa Jiminez, a Tujunga woman killed herself when she torched her car on a mountain road and climbed inside.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators said Rubie S. Poublane, 26, died shortly after she set her car ablaze on the side of a road in the Angeles National Forest at about 11 a.m. Saturday, and then sat inside the burning vehicle.

Although no suicide note was discovered, Poublane was apparently distraught over an illness and family troubles, Deputy Rafael Estrada said.

Jiminez, 35, doused herself with a flammable liquid and set herself ablaze in the street in front of her Highland Park home, Los Angeles Police Sgt. John Johnston said.

Neighbors extinguished the flames with water from a garden hose, although Jiminez pleaded for them to leave her alone. She was taken to Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, suffering third-degree burns over 90% of her body.

Jimenez--the mother of a 2-year-old boy and two girls, 1 and 4--died at 3:46 p.m. Sunday, said Suzanne Schimpeler, the hospital’s administrative director.

On Friday night, Jiminez had told her husband, Jose, that she was despondent over the family’s living conditions, Johnston said.

“She said she was sick of the cockroaches and her dirty house,” the sergeant said. “She had asked her husband to set her on fire to purify her. He refused and tried to calm her down. When they went to bed he thought it was over.”

About 6 a.m., Johnston said, Jiminez awoke, went outside and set herself on fire.

Teresa Manzo, a neighbor who was gardening, initially mistook the woman’s body for a pile of burning trash. When Manzo ran closer to investigate the fire, she saw it was her neighbor.

Manzo alerted another neighbor, then ran home and filled a container with water to pour on the body.

“(Jiminez) looked up at us and, in a hoarse whisper, said, ‘No water, no water,’ ” recalled Manzo.

As neighbors doused Jiminez, Jose awoke to the commotion in the street. When he stepped out of the house, he saw his wife. Neighbors said he stood in the street with a glazed look, crying his wife’s name and asking, “What have you done?”

“It’s unusual to have something like this, where two people try to kill themselves by fire on the same day,” Estrada said. “There are a lot of ways to commit suicide, but setting yourself on fire . . . well, that’s not something we see everyday.”