Report: Woman Catches Fire From Cigarette (at psychiatric day-care center)

clickondetroit.com ^

[chance33_98]

Report: Woman Catches Fire From Cigarette

Victim Pronounced Dead At Detroit Hospital

POSTED: 4:57 pm EST February 26, 2004 UPDATED: 5:13 pm EST February 26, 2004

Authorities say a woman died Thursday afternoon after her clothes apparently caught fire from a cigarette.

Firefighters were called to a psychiatric day-care center at Field Street on Detroit's east side around 3 p.m. where they found the woman on fire sitting outside the center.

She was rushed to Detroit Receiving Hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Officials remained at the scene to investigate.

[martin_fierro]

[El Gran Salseron]

Spontaneous combustion?

[steveo]

This kind of carp really burns me up.

[camle]

darwin award candidate?

[G.Mason]

As you can see .......

the wife and I dress for smoking.

I suppose that means the shrink won't get paid now

[Doctor Stochastic]

Spontaneous combustion?

If you think that the flick of a Bic igniting a stick is spontaneous.

[ClearCase_guy]

I believe most people would assume that this woman was a psychiatric patient who committed suicide. Hope they check for accelerants.

[beelzepug]

"This kind of carp really burns me up."

Incendiary fish alert!

[Born Conservative]

I used to work in an in-patient psych hospital, and almost saw this happen once. I was sitting in the dayroom supervising the patients (who were allowed to smoke inside at the time), and I looked over at one of the patient's, who happened to have a cigarette between her fingers. The cigarette had almost burned down to the part that was between her fingers. When I told her to put it in the ashtray, she didn't respond, so I then tried to grab onto the cigarette, but her fingers wouldn't move. She was having a reaction to her anti-psychotic meds which is called a dystonic reaction-the muscles become rigid, but the patient is fully aware of what is going on (they sometimes cannot even talk or move their head). I managed to pry open her fingers, and after a shot of Benadryl, she was able to move OK. It's possible that the patient mentioned in this article did something similar.