A man in Mississippi is accused of dousing multiple people with gasoline and then setting them on fire, killing two of the victims and injuring five others, WLBT-TV reports.
Authorities allege that around 7 p.m. Easter Sunday, 31-year-old Marcos Uriel Lara Perez got into a dispute with the victims at a home in Byram. The nature of the dispute has not been disclosed publicly.
Investigators believe that Perez “threw a bucket of gasoline on all the victims in the kitchen area of the residence, then ignited the fire using a BIC cigarette lighter, thus causing the structure to completely engulf in flames,” according to a press release from the Byram Police Department.
All the victims are men and lived in the home. It was not immediately clear whether any of them were related.
Firefighters got a call about the blaze and upon responding found the body of a 77-year-old man inside the residence. That man was later identified as Filiberto Torres.
Several people were outside of the residence and had suffered severe burns. Medics rushed those victims to the hospital, including 45-year-old Hose Thomas Segura Juarez, who was later flown to a trauma center and died two days after the attack.
It took more than three hours for fire crews to get the blaze under control, according to WLBT-TV, and as of Friday, three victims were still in the hospital.
Prosecutors have charged Perez with two counts of capital murder and three counts of aggravated assault. He also was injured in the incident and is reported to be unconscious at an Alabama burn facility.
Byram Police Chief David Errington told WLBT that the scene was “honestly horrifying” and the “worst traumatic event he’d seen aside from a car wreck.”
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[Featured Photo: Marcos Uriel Lara Perez/Byram Police Department]
