Roosevelt Kitchen (Photo source: Alachua County Jail)
Love is an interesting topic and a wonderful feeling but in the case of Roosevelt Kitchen, love is a heated subject.
Roosevelt Kitchen, 55 and resident of Florida, is accused of pouring gasoline on his girlfriend of four years while she lay in a neighbor’s bathtub. By the time investigators arrived on the scene, they said that her skin had literally been melted because of the combination of gasoline and heat.
The incendiary issue that caused the ensuing fire was an argument that happened on late Wednesday night after the couple drank and took narcotics. Following the argument, the woman left the scene at Creek Forest Apartments complex on northwest 39th Avenue, returned, then sat on a neighbor’s front porch.
The police report goes on to say that Kitchen saw her on the neighbor’s porch and appeared sometime later on the porch with her, carrying a red gasoline can.
What happened next is what nightmares are made of and definitely not something you would expect your boyfriend of four years to do. Kitchen then doused his girlfriend with gasoline, according to witnesses, before saying, “Anybody got a lighter?”
In one swift motion, he then reached into his back pocket, pulled out a lighter, and set the woman ablaze. The girlfriend and a neighbor quickly tried to put the fire out but, according to police, then decided to take off her burning clothes to stop the fire from burning her.
Kitchen is being held in the Alachua County Jail on a $1 million bond.
