A New York father who left his 1-year-old twins in the car while he worked an eight-hour shift told the police, “I blanked out. My babies are dead. I killed my babies,” prosecutors said on Saturday, July 27.
Juan Rodriguez, 39, told the officers he thought he had dropped the twins off at daycare before he went to his job at a Bronx hospital on Friday, according to a criminal complaint filed by the district attorney’s office.
Rodriguez sobbed as he pleaded not guilty to two counts each of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and endangering the welfare of a child. Rodriguez faces up to four years in prison for the criminal negligent homicide charge and up to 15 years for the manslaughter charge.
He was released late Saturday on $100,000 bail. His next court date is August 1, when a grand jury will decide whether or not to indict.
Investigators believe Rodriguez parked a silver Honda Accord with the twins, Phoenix and Luna, in car seats in the back. It appeared that he drove off after finishing work before realizing the children were in the car and frantically summoning help, police said.
The boy and girl were pronounced dead at the scene.
“This is a tragedy of horrific proportions,” Rodriguez’s lawyer, Joey Jackson, told the Post.
Jackson told CNN when he went to see his client Saturday, he looked "inconsolable and beside himself."
"The (Rodriguez) family is ripped apart," Jackson said. "His mental state is very fragile based on what happened. It's just an awful scenario."
A judge asked that Rodriguez be put on suicide watch, Jackson said during a news conference Saturday evening.
The twins were identified as Mariza and Phoenix Rodriguez. A cause of death for the twins hasn’t yet been determined.
Rodriquez works as a social worker at the James J. Peters VA Hospital in Kingsbridge.
He lives in the Rockland County hamlet of New City, where neighbors said they were shocked by the news of the deaths.
One neighbor described them as loving and attentive parents, reported the New York Post.
“They were July babies. It was just this month they had a big party—a bouncy house, the whole thing.”
“I’ve never seen them outside unattended,” the neighbor said, referring to the couple's twins and 4-year-old.
“He would never hurt his children,” another neighbor told the New York Post. “He’s a very loving father … it’s beyond crazy."
Temperatures in the area were in the mid-80s at the time. Temperatures inside a car are likely to have been much higher.
Hot Car Deaths
According to NoHeatStroke.org, 803 children have died in the United States due to Pediatric Vehicular Heatstroke (PVH) since 1998. All of these deaths were preventable.Explaining how the heatstroke deaths happen, the organization said: “The atmosphere and the windows of a car are relatively ‘transparent’ to the sun’s shortwave radiation and are warmed little. However, this shortwave energy does heat objects that it strikes. For example, a dark dashboard, steering wheel, or seat temperatures often are in the range of 180 to over 200 degrees F.”
In 2018, 52 children died after being left in a hot car.
“In more than half of these fatalities, the child was forgotten in the vehicle by a parent or caregiver,” said the Injury Facts.