Seattle Couple Set on Fire by Uncle While Visiting Puerto Rico

A Seattle man has died, and his fiance is in critical condition, after his uncle set fire to the family during dinner while vacationing in Puerto Rico.

Jesus Sanchez and his fiance Kate Donohue were vacationing in Puerto Rico and were invited to a dinner in their honor at one of Sanchez's uncle's house. After the couple and other families sat down, that's when the uncle, Sanchez Diaz, entered the room, poured gasoline on the family, and set them on fire.

KING-TV reports:

The two went to Puerto Rico so Kate could meet her fiance's family. No one could have imagined the horror that unfolded over a family dinner.

The blaze occurred Saturday in the central Puerto Rican mountain town of Florida, where suspect Justino Sanchez Diaz, 45, lives in a two-story house with his parents and a sister, police Lt. Reinaldo Jimenez said.

Sanchez Diaz had doused the walls of the house with gasoline and set canisters filled with fuel under the dining room table and other furniture, he said.

"He planned the party so that everyone would show up," Jimenez said.

As soon as the 14 people sat down for an early dinner on Jan. 1, Sanchez Diaz emerged from his room armed with a 20-pound container of propane gas and then doused them with kerosene, Jimenez said witnesses told police.

Sanchez Diaz then set them on fire using a stick wrapped with a towel soaked in fuel, Jimenez said.

Heidi Robles, identified as one of the suspect's nieces, told the newspaper Primera Hora that several relatives ran out of the house on fire and that neighbors used hoses to try to put out the flames.

The couple had been engaged for only a few months and were planning a summer wedding in Seattle.

This is not the first time Sanchez Diaz set fire to a building. KING says he burned down his brother's hen house about five years ago. After the latest pyromaniac attack, he was found soaking in the house's bathtub. Police have charged him with murder.

Donohue is in critical condition at the University of Miami hospital with burns on 80 percent of her body.

"He is going to pay for this," one of Sanchez Diaz's relatives said.