MyNorthwest.com staff

Kate Donahue, whose fiance passed away of burns after being attacked by a family member in Puerto Rico on New Year's Day, has also passed away.

Donahue died early Thursday afternoon at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Burn Center in Miami, Florida. At the time, friends and family had not yet told Donahue that her fiance, Jesus Sanchez, had passed away.

"She passed very peacefully," said Justin Stein, a close family friend. "We were reminiscing about her life. The doctor said she could hear us talking to her."

A friend of the couple, Danielle, told KIRO Radio's Ron and Don on Wednesday that Kate and Jesus were on cloud nine after getting engaged. She said they were excited to have Kate meet his family in Puerto Rico.

The couple was part of a group of 14 people that suspect Justino Sanchez Diaz, 45, had invited to the house he shared with his parents and sister for an early New Year's dinner, authorities said.

Police said Sanchez Diaz already had doused the walls with gasoline and set canisters with fuel under furniture, including the dining room table. As the group sat down to eat, he came out with a tank of propane gas, doused people with kerosene and set them on fire with a homemade torch, police said.

"Everyone came out yelling, 'He's crazy! He's crazy!'" neighbor Viviana Bruno, 31, told The Associated Press as she recalled the fire that claimed five lives and critically injured several people.

"It was like a horror movie," she said.

Sanchez Diaz has been arrested on attempted-murder charges for the New Year's Day attack.

"It was something nobody expected," local police Lt. Francisco Rosado said. "We haven't even had five murders in the last decade."

Family members have not speculated on a motive, and police say Sanchez Diaz has kept silent and refused to eat since his arrest.

The first person out of the two-story home nestled near the mountains of the central Puerto Rican town of Florida was Samuel Molina.

He ran across the street to his house, where Bruno and other neighbors laid him down on the cool tile floor, opened a hose and poured water on him.

"'Don't let me die,' he kept saying," Bruno said.

Molina was the first to die. Also dead is the suspect's elderly mother, and his teenage niece.

A facebook page has been set up collecting donations for Jesus and Kate's families.

A statement from the Miami hospital where Donahue died expressed the family's thanks for the outpouring of public support.

Donahue was known for her collection of 40 high-heeled, black shoes and her love for dancing, especially salsa. She even dislocated her knee dancing to Michael Jackson's "Beat It," best friend Lisa Spoelstra told the AP.

She was born in California, then moved to Washington and later Arizona before returning to her native state to study nursing, following her mother's footsteps, Spoelstra said.

"We were always looking for good, harmless fun," she said of her friend.

Donahue worked at Group Health in Seattle, while Sanchez was an engineer at Boeing.

Officials at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez said Thursday that Sanchez was an outstanding student.

"Jesus at such a young age and as recently as August 2010 obtained a U.S. patent for the development of a system for airplane cargo transportation," said Benjamin Colucci, dean of the School of Engineering.

Many people in the town of Florida know the Sanchez family, described as a warm and gregarious group. They live on a dead-end street in a home that has served many times as the center for neighborhood gatherings, neighbors said.

That tradition ended around the time Sanchez Diaz moved into the house several years ago and his mother's health began deteriorating, said Bruno, who has known the family since she was a child.

Sanchez Diaz had being living and working in San Juan when he took over his father's moving business, but he later became unemployed and moved to Florida. He waved occasionally to neighbors but kept to himself, said neighbor Jose Loubriel, 77, who was a cousin of the suspect's dead mother.

Several relatives who survived the blaze declined to comment, saying they did not want to jeopardize the investigation.

Orlando Robles, whose wife is the suspect's sister, said his family did not attend the family dinner next door. He declined to say why, but police said Sanchez Diaz has had several run-ins with Robles' family, including setting fire to his hen house several years ago.

"Through this pain that we're experiencing we're more united than ever," Robles said, adding: "These wounds will take a long time to heal."

Minutes after the blaze began, Loubriel said he heard people yelling outside his house, asking that he help rescue his cousin, who was in her 80s and could not run out of the house.

"When I entered the house, someone had already found her," he said. "Imagine. I was in shock to see the condition of the house inside. And all those people, my God, all of them naked."

Florida's mayor, Jose Aragon Parga, said the community is still in shock.

"We have not had one violent death, and in one day, several people die," he said. "Nobody thought it could happen."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

You might also be interested in:

• Frank Shiers: On Kate Donahue's Passing
• Ron and Don: Friends tell couple's story