New Jersey Boys Suffocated Slowly While Police Searched For Them

The tragic story of the three young boys in Camden, NJ, who died in a car trunk last month has taken another tragic turn this week because one of the mothers feels the police may be "responsible" for their deaths since they didn’t find the boys in time. The boys, Anibal Cruz, Jesstin Pagan, and Daniel Agosto, went missing on June 22 while they were playing in one of the boy’s back yards. Relatives searched for the boys for three hours before they called authorities. For two days, police and rescuers searched for the boys, ages 5, 6, and 11, using helicopters, dogs, and boats on the Delaware River, nearby. The search ended on the night of June 24 when the father of one of the boys found their bodies in the trunk of a car that was sitting just a few feet from where they had last been seen.

According to an autopsy report released this week, the boys suffocated slowly in the trunk, being trapped alive for at least 13 hours. Experts told the Associated Press last month that the boys most likely passed out within an hour or two of being trapped in the trunk, so they probably would not have suffered. The deaths have been ruled accidental. A report is expected next week from prosecutors discussing several issues, including the question of why searchers never looked in the car trunk while they scoured the area. When asked what specific details the report will contain, Camden County Prosecutor Vincent Sarubbi said in a statement, "It would be inappropriate to comment on other aspects of the case until we have established a clear and complete picture of the events and discussed our findings with the families."

The time that the boys died is particularly crucial in this case due to the possibility of lawsuits being filed against the officials who searched for them. If the boys were already dead by the time police arrived, then the families may not be successful in suing officials for not finding the boys in time to save them. No legal complaints or lawsuits have been filed yet, but Peter M. Villari, a lawyer for the family of Anibal Cruz, has hinted that a lawsuit is in the works. He told reporters at the New York Times that "the numbers speak for themselves. They were certainly alive when the police arrived and certainly well after the search started." But one of the mothers, Iraida Agosto, apparently sees things more realistically and honestly, saying that the autopsy report findings do not mean that she will sue. "I don't think me and my husband want to go through that. Suing anybody or getting a lawyer isn't going to help us bring him back," Agosto said.

Villari, however, has adamantly said that responsibility for the children’s deaths is now "squarely on the shoulders of the police." Interesting comment, since the responsibility for taking care of children should be squarely on the shoulders of their parents. And whose responsibility was it to ensure that an abandoned car wasn't available for them to crawl into in the first place? As the three boys lay dying in the trunk just a few yards from one of the boy’s houses, their parents searched for them for three long hours before calling police, and there’s no way to know how long they were locked in the trunk before anyone even noticed they were missing. If the parents really did search for three hours, and the boys hadn’t been locked in the trunk very long before the search began, wouldn’t someone have heard them crying out for help? This terribly tragic incident was just an unfortunate accident, and no one—especially the police—should be held responsible.