A grand jury hasn’t heard the manslaughter case against Juan Rodriguez, the Iraq War veteran father who allegedly left his twins to die in a hot car in New York.
Rodriguez appeared in court for a hearing, and prosecutors said that there hasn’t been any “grand jury action,” said Bronx District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Patrice O’Shaughnessy.
“We’re still investigating,” she said.
Rodriguez posted $100,000 bail after he was arrested in the deaths. He was charged with two counts of criminally negligent homicide and manslaughter.
His attorney told the Post that he is optimistic that the district attorney’s office will dismiss charges against him.
“We understand that they will continue to evaluate all aspects of the case and we welcome their evaluation of that,” said his lawyer, Joey Jackson. “We believe at the conclusion of them evaluating all the facts, all evidence and everything in this case, they will come to the conclusion that this is a horrible tragedy.”
The father discovered the twins, Phoenix and Luna, unconscious in their car seats in his Honda Accord as it was parked at his workplace, a VA hospital in the Bronx.
He is slated to appear in court on Aug. 27.
Called Wife Before Discovery
According to New York station WPIX, Rodriguez called his wife as he was pulling away from the VA Hospital parking lot where he worked as a social worker. He then asked her to pick them up from daycare.The father then realized that the twins were still strapped to their car seats and were never taken to their daycare, the station reported.
“He made a phone call as he was leaving the hospital asking his wife to pick up the kids at daycare,” a law enforcement source told the station. “He was supposed to pick up a uniform for his reserve duty. He truly believed they were at the daycare.”
The WPIX report stated that Rodriguez drove two blocks after leaving the hospital before he noticed his twin babies, Luna and Phoenix, were still there.
Witnesses said that after he stopped the car, he began screaming.
“I blanked out! I killed my babies,” he reportedly said, according to the station.
Reports said that the babies’ internal temperatures reached 108 degrees F.
“Children have died in cars with the temperature as low as 63 degrees. Basically, the car becomes a greenhouse. At 70 degrees on a sunny day, after a half hour, the temperature inside a car is 104 degrees. After an hour, it can reach 113 degrees,” stated Jan Null, adjunct professor at San Francisco State University, according to the website.
