MIAMI, Florida-

It must have seemed like a clip out of a low budget B flick. If I was there, I probably wouldn’t have believed my eyes and been looking around for a film crew. But there was no film crew and this event at the the Mall of Americas in Miami, Florida was very real.

An obviously very troubled woman was in a clothing store called Savage Boutique when she decided that was the day she was going to kill herself. Who knows, maybe it was premeditated, but either way she planned to check out. The strange thing to me is the way she decided to go about it, in a very public manner, and in what I believe is the absolute most painful way possible.

The 43 year old woman was in the boutique where she proceeded to douse herself with gasoline and light herself on fire. At that point I would have expected her to start screaming and running around frantically, but not this crazy lady. Witnesses said she extended her arms out to her sides and slowly walked out into the main part of the mall, where all that could be seen was a fireball. Two men and a woman used two fire extinguishers to put the blaze out, each of them sustaining mild injuries. She was said to have been on fire for two and a half minutes and her underwear was the only clothing remaining on her, everything else was burned to a crisp.

After two and a half minutes of being a human fireball I would expect her to be near death. But not this pyro, in shock, she quietly walked about a block and a half to the parking lot where fire crews found her still conscious. She had sustained third-degree burns to 75% of her body. I imagine that being lit on fire would rank at about 145^th on the suicidal method chart, right after stabbing ones self 50 times with a shank and crushing ones self in a car crusher. Like everyone else, I’ve been close to campfires and I can honestly say, Hell No. As to her reasoning for doing it at the Savage Boutique? Her husband said she had a history of mental illness and her eldest daughter worked in the store (not that that’s a reason).

The moral of the story: If you are crazy enough to light yourself on fire, it’s definitely time to check into a mental ward.

© 2009 StrangeRush.com

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