Posted on 06/25/2005 4:18:48 AM PDT by kcvl
June 25, 2005 -- CAMDEN, N.J. — The father of a missing 6-year-old boy dropped to his knees and let out a blood-curdling scream after opening the trunk of a parked car last night to discover the body of his son and two young friends who had been missing since Wednesday.
The bodies of Jesstin "Manny" Pagan, 5; Daniel "Danny" Agosto, 6; and Anibal Cruz, 11 — who were last seen playing in a yard in this hard-luck suburb of Philadelphia — were found by Danny's father, David Agosto, shortly before 7 p.m. in the maroon Toyota Camry.
"Anibal's father told me that there was a plastic bag over his son's head," Anibal's babysitter, Nancy Santana, told The Post last night.
The death car belongs to Anibal's grandmother and had been parked in the driveway of the family's house throughout the three-day search for the boys in neighboring woodlands and the nearby Delaware River.
Hearing Agosto's anguished screams, family and friends frantically ran from a nearby porch where they had held a vigil hoping for a miracle. The grim discovery echoed across the community.
"This is a moment that the families and the city hoped and prayed we wouldn't have to face," said Camden County Prosecutor Vincent Sarubbi.
Last night, law enforcement officials declined to elaborate on their investigation, but said they were searching for Angel Martinez, 28, of Camden, as a "person of interest" in the case.
snip
Sarubbi and Figueroa said the car had been searched on Thursday with a canine unit.
snip
"We looked in the car on Thursday," an anguished neighbor, who did not want to be identified, told The Post.
"I can't believe we didn't look in the trunk."
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Does that year and make of car have another way to open the door without a key????
AC is about 50 miles from Camden.
With so much media and video tape at the site Are there any shots of the car to indicate that the truck was open at any time???
MSNBC just announced no foul play.
I hate to say it but the same thing applied to little Jessica in Florida. The b@st@rd had her in his room for three days while they looked high and low for her. Just not in the house next door. Then buried her in the evening, alive I might add, right in front of their noses.
Just to stay real.... a closed car in the sun gets hot because of the windows.... a trunk wouldn't get as hot as fast.
I am sure it was uncomfortable, and would certainly be as hot as it is outside, and I don't know how well they could have gotten air in there, but the situation of a trunk is not like the situation in a closed glass greenhouse of a car.
I'm ambivilant about all those here who think people are negligent to have not looked in the trunk. If I walked up searching and looked in the windows, particularly if it was locked, I never would have thought to look in the trunk.
Any news on the search of the car? Did they pop the truck during the initial search???
No they did not check the trunk. They did a casual walk around of the car and looked into the passenger compartment. The boys were probably already dead, though, if the search by authorities did not begin for several hours. A very tragic accident.
What model year was the car? Did it have an internal trunk release? Was the back of the rear seat designed so it could be dropped to increase cargo space and would that have made it easier for someone to kick it out from the trunk? All of the foregoing questions must be answered before it will be possible to determine if the boys died by shutting themselves into the trunk or were murdered.
Jesus wept.
I'm guessing the car was not locked. I wouldn't see any other way to gain access to it. The biys would not have had a key or a remote to unlock it. The car was unlocked, they opened it and poppped the trunk. got in it and closed it. If you know anything about boys, they are always up to something. None of these simple tasks would be out of the realm of possibility.
Yes. I feel very sorry for all involved. Most of these people have very little. They all seem to be good parents. To lose what little, precious things they have has got to be totally devastating to them.
Most late-model cars (like this one) have remote trunk-opening levers near the driver's seat... If the passenger compartment is not locked, no key is needed for the trunk
This is a bad design as it turns any unlocked car into an unused refrigerator type thing
A reporter said it was rumored that the 11 yr. old may have in the past been seen hanging/playing around that car
Also .. the Police Chief said it could take up to 30 days to check the logs to see if the trunk was checked or not
If there was a plastic bag over the boy's head, he and his friends were murdered.
I think this might be misinformation
I;m not hearing anything about this on the news here
"how would it be possible that three children could be murdered in a such a short time (that the mom claims) with no one noticing or hearing anything? or if the bodies were in the trunk the entire time during the search, wouldn't that be the FIRST place police would look, like a magnet drawn to an obvious place of confinement for children?"
My guess is the children could have met their demise by the river then carried off to another location which might explain why the hound dogs could only sniff their scent to the river then the scent went no where from there because they didn't touch the ground from then on(?)
see my post
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1430377/posts?page=196#196
there was no foul play
Just a terrible accident
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