Chemicals Used in Culver City Woman's Suicide Had Potential to Kill Others

The suicide of a Culver City woman in the Hollywood Hills last month is one among a string of such deaths in the last year in which victims created chemicals so lethal that they had the potential to kill anyone standing nearby, according to reports released by the Associated Press.

Ana Gutierrez, 23, made a suicide pact with a man she met in an online chat room for those planning to commit suicide, authorities said. Finding directions online for the mixture of chemicals that included hydrogen sulfide, the pair used a Nissan Sentra as the place to inhale the fumes. Signs posted on the windows of the car said: "Danger! Chemicals Inside! Call 911."

If the fumes had escaped from the car, many others could have been injured if not killed, according to authorities. "One big breath and boom, that's it," Los Angeles County coroner's spokesman Ed Winter told the Associated Press. There were about six bottles of the toxic chemicals in the car where the woman was found, he said.

Gutierrez was found dead inside the Nissan on La Presca Drive in Hollywood on May 23. The man, who exited the car earlier because he got sick from too much liquor, went back and found Gutierrez dead, officials said. He then walked to a nearby hotel and called 911, according to the Hollywood Heights Association.

Gutierrez's suicide is one of many using hydrogen sulfide. A woman was found dead in her car in Castaic in 2010 using the same mixture, and with similar notes taped up on the windows. A man was found in his car in 2008 in Pasadena; he used fungicide and toilet bowl cleaner to make the mixture. And in 2009, a man was found unconscious in his car with two pans of an unidentified chemical mix. He was transported to the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, where he died two days later.

City News Service and the Associated Press contributed to this report.