She wouldn’t move her car. He grabbed a blowtorch and burned her face, Pierce deputies say

A Pierce County man burned his brother’s girlfriend with a blowtorch and threatened to douse her in gasoline Tuesday afternoon after she argued with his mother, prosecutors say.

The 42-year-old man was arraigned Wednesday in Pierce County Superior Court on charges of second-degree assault, felony harassment and obstructing police. His bail was set at $25,000.

According to charging documents:

The girlfriend received permission from her boyfriend’s family to keep her car on their property after it had been vandalized. They called her Tuesday to tell her to move it, but it was not drivable.

When she got to the family home, between Tacoma and Parkland in the 800 block of 107th Street South, her boyfriend’s brother and his mother began arguing with her outside, shouting profanities in her direction and telling her to move her car.

Her boyfriend’s brother came up to her, pushed her against the car and told her to leave. He then grabbed a propane torch, lit it and held it up against the side of her head, burning her face and catching her hair on fire.

She was able to put the fire out, but her boyfriend’s mother continued to yell at her. Her boyfriend’s brother then threatened to grab a can of gasoline and light her on fire. When he ran to get the gas can, she ran away and called 911.

A Pierce County deputy arrived to the house and ordered the boyfriend to come outside the home’s fence and get on the ground.

His mother, who was on the porch, yelled back, “Nobody has done anything wrong here.”

The boyfriend’s brother barged out of the house and yelled at the deputy and then kept going inside and returning. As several other deputies arrived, the boyfriend finally stayed outside.

He stripped down to his skivvies at one point to show deputies he was unarmed, but the deputies told him to put his shorts back on and get on the ground.

A deputy met with the victim near the home, and she struggled to speak through her hysterical crying, her hand clutching the singed part of her forehead, court records show.

“He attacked me with a blowtorch,” she said.

Her boyfriend told deputies his brother got upset with his girlfriend and told her to leave. He said his girlfriend likes to have the last word in arguments, and that his brother grabbed the blowtorch and held it to his girlfriend’s face. He never saw her injuries because she left immediately.

This story was originally published August 29, 2018 at 3:53 PM.