A 20-year-old woman in Osan, South Korea turned a simple pest control attempt into a deadly tragedy when her makeshift flamethrower killed a cockroach and her neighbor.
A 20-year-old woman in Osan, South Korea turned a simple pest control attempt into a deadly tragedy when her makeshift flamethrower killed a cockroach and her neighbor.
The unnamed woman used a lighter and spray pain relief patches to create an improvised flamethrower around 5:35 a.m. Monday morning (October 20), according to local reports. The fire broke out on the second story of a five-story apartment complex in Osan-si.
A 30-year-old Chinese neighbor died while trying to flee her fifth-floor apartment with her husband and their 2-month-old baby. The family climbed out their window to escape the smoke-filled stairwells, but the woman fell while attempting to reach a neighboring building about three feet away.
She was taken to the hospital where she later died. Eight other residents suffered smoke inhalation injuries from the blaze.
The woman told police she had used the same cockroach-killing method before without incident. “She had used the method before, but this time, items in her home caught fire,” BBC reported.
Police in Osan said they will seek an arrest warrant for the woman, who faces charges of fire caused by gross negligence and death by negligence.
The building houses commercial shops on its first floor and 32 residential units from the second to fifth floors.
Blasting cockroaches with blowtorches or homemade flamethrowers has emerged as a novel pest control method popularized by social media videos. In 2018, an Australian man set fire to his kitchen while trying to kill cockroaches with a similar homemade device.
The Chinese victim’s husband managed to climb over to the adjacent block safely after they handed their baby through the window to a neighbor.
Police believe the couple attempted the window escape because thick smoke from the fire had blocked the building’s stairway.
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