I am back from Camden, covering the three missing boys who were discovered Friday suffocated in a car trunk. Today’s storyhere; there’ll be another tomorrow.
Camden wasn’t nearly as bad as I had imagined … I guess I was thinking there’d be cars burning on the street corners, or something. But the tragedy was on this tree-lined block in a (poor) neighborhood with a strong sense of community. I even sat in on a Spanish-language church service this morning! Sung “Hallelujah” in Spanish. (Well, mumbled a bit … I don’t actually speak Spanish). I was just there to see what they had to say about the tragedy — which is of course horrendous — but as a visitor they had me stand up and introduce myself. “Thanks for welcoming me here,” I offered. “It was a very nice service.”
Anyway, actually, it was.
I don’t understand how they could suffocate in a car trunk. Die from heat prostration, I understand, but suffocate? Wouldn’t that have had to have been a specially constructed trunk to prevent enough oxygen from coming in to keep them breathing?
When I was a kid, we used to hear stories about kids dying in abandoned refrigerators, but refrigerators have rubber seals that keep the air out.
I actually asked that at the press conference. It wasn’t an airtight trunk … but apparently, there just wasn’t enough air getting in for all three of them to survive. Very sad.