3 Children in Truck Die; Fumes Blamed

Invisible but deadly carbon monoxide fumes apparently killed two little girls and their toddler brother Monday as they slept in the camper shell of their family pickup, tucked into blankets for the long drive home from visiting relatives.

Their parents thought the three children were sleeping soundly through the nighttime drive, worn out after a weekend of playing with their grandmother and a passel of cousins in San Francisco.

But when they arrived at their Hollywood apartment around 6 a.m., Rolando Juarez and Estela Aguilar could not rouse the young ones.

They shook the limp bodies. They shouted. They tried CPR.

“Nothing,” said the children’s uncle, Michael Flores.

The youngest, 20-month-old Kevin, was already cold, a cousin said.

Panicked relatives called paramedics, who sought to revive the children. “We did everything possible,” a Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman said. “It was just so sad.” But Kevin, 3-year-old Kimberly and 7-year-old Natalie were pronounced dead soon after at local hospitals.

“Rolando, he can’t talk,” said his cousin, Omar Echaverry, one of the many relatives who clustered outside the family’s Leland Way apartment to mourn the children and console the parents. “He said ‘I don’t know what I am in life now. If they die, they take my heart with them.’ ”

The official cause of the children’s deaths will be determined by the coroner’s office, but a physician said it appeared to be carbon monoxide poisoning. Los Angeles police impounded the truck to check for a malfunction.

Carbon monoxide--a hard-to-detect gas that has no color, odor or taste--could have seeped into the truck’s camper shell through a faulty exhaust system or even through an open window, said Brian Humphrey, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Because carbon monoxide pumped out the tailpipe sometimes swirls upward, catches an air current and curls into the rear window of a pickup, Fire Department officials advise families to keep the windows shut, Humphrey said.

“An open window may give you a false sense of security because you think you’re letting fresh air in, when you may in fact be sucking the poison in,” Humphrey said.

However, he emphasized that carbon monoxide can sometimes seep into camper shells even when the windows are closed, and advised families not to let passengers ride there. Investigators did not know if the windows in the Juarez pickup were opened or closed.

The children spent most of the drive from San Francisco in the pickup’s cabin with their parents, Echaverry said. But as the night wore on, Kevin fell asleep and was put in the back. His sisters, getting sleepy, asked to stretch out in the back with him.

Aguilar--the mother of the two youngest children--climbed into the back with the children to tuck them into blankets and pad the sides of the camper with pillows. She watched them doze off as the pickup sped homeward.

Later, she told relatives that the children appeared to be sleeping at about 5 a.m., when Juarez stopped for a bite to eat, Flores said.

After the food break, Aguilar decided to ride the rest of the way home in the cab, leaving the children alone in the back.

She had experienced none of the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning, such as headache, nausea or confusion--although she did tell Echaverry that her body felt heavy, a condition she chalked up to fatigue.

“There would be no reason to suspect anything,” said Dr. Robin Kallas, who tried to revive the two younger children at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. Natalie, the oldest, was taken to Cedars Sinai.

Even after the youngsters were pronounced dead, Aguilar refused to accept that they could have been poisoned in the pickup. To everyone who offered condolences, she replied that the children were just sleeping, Echaverry said.

“She doesn’t want to come into reality,” he said. “It will be more painful for her there.”

Aguilar does not work outside the home. Instead, she stayed with the three children. Natalie, the daughter of Juarez and his first wife, was a budding artist who loved to draw Barbies; Kimberly delighted in trying on makeup. Kevin’s favorite toy was a set of mock carpenter tools just like the ones his daddy used at work.

Juarez, a Mexican-born carpenter, loved to treat the kids to ice cream from the trucks that jangle through his Hollywood neighborhood at night. “He would say, ‘In this country, it’s really hard [for me] to make a living, but I know my babies will be somebody one day,’ ” Echaverry recounted. “He was so happy with his babies. Now that is history.”

Although the family drove everywhere in their Nissan pickup, Flores said he warned them that it was unsafe for the children to ride in the back, under the camper shell. In fact, he said he offered them the use of his own Ford Tempo for the long drive to San Francisco over the weekend. But the Tempo was not insured and the pickup was. So Juarez took the Nissan.

“It’s terrible,” Flores said.

As he spoke, other relatives gathered in front of Juarez’s apartment, weeping and hugging one another. Inside, the grieving parents could not rest even with the help of sedatives, Echaverry said.

And he predicted their sorrow would only deepen as the first shock wore off.

“Now, everybody is there supporting them,” Echaverry said. “But I know in three years, five years, that’s when it will be the most terrible for them. When they feel in the night the loneliness in their apartment.”

A trust fund will be established to help pay for the children’s funerals. Checks should be sent to the Juarez Family Fund, Los Angeles Police Department Juvenile Division, Room 140, at 150 N. Los Angeles St., Los Angeles, CA 90012.