"3 deaths in Md. car ruled accidental overheating" by David Dishneau | Associated Press August 13, 2014
HAGERSTOWN, Md. — A woman and her two young daughters found dead in their stifling car in a middle-school parking lot in June died from accidental overheating, the Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said Tuesday.
The formal cause of death was hyperthermia and environmental heat exposure, said Bruce Goldfarb, a spokesman for the office. He said the autopsy reports will not be complete for at least a month.
Toxicology tests were negative, leaving investigators with no explanation for why an apparently healthy woman would sit with her small children in a hot car for hours until they died.
That doesn't sound right or make sense at all. Were they drugged? I mean, instinct takes over at some point and you get out of the car.
‘‘It gives us more questions than answers as to why,’’ said Hagerstown police Captain Paul Kifer. ‘‘It’s very possible she was having a mental breakdown and didn’t realize what she was doing would cause her death.’’
Was she on any pre$cription pharmaceuticals?
Guyanese immigrant Allison Keyonda Pluck, formerly Allison Lancaster, 32, was found dead in her silver Nissan sedan June 16 along with the bodies of Shania Gill, 18 months, and Shameka Gill, 6 months. The mother was reclined in the driver’s seat and the girls were strapped in their child seats in the back with the windows closed, the ignition off and the doors unlocked, police said.
Police have found no connection between the family and the school. They say Pluck had quit her job at a Walmart in Frederick, about 20 miles away, a month or two before she died.
The girls’ father, construction worker Paul Gill, also a Guyanese national, said he was puzzled by the deaths. He and Pluck lived in apartments about a mile apart in Hagerstown, about 70 miles west of Baltimore, but he said he saw his daughters often.
‘‘It’s very hard,’’ Gill said in a telephone interview.
Police say a Western Heights Middle School employee, leaving on the last day for teachers before summer break, spotted the bodies in the late afternoon on a day when outdoor temperatures peaked near 90 degrees.
Now I am really confused because THAT 18-MONTH-OLD is going to BAWL at SOME POINT!
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There has been a spate of these articles over the summer, probably to try and sell you global warming amidst the chill (not being reported, of course), but leaving one with the feeling of Conditization as in the summer of 2001.
I'm sorry I no longer give a shit about what may or may not be under these shallow, superficial, and quite frankly, UNBELIEVABLE TALES of FICTION I read in my paper.
UPDATE:
"Maryland man held after police chase
A Maryland man is being held without bail after on charges of causing a car crash that injured another person in Burlington on Monday night. Robert D. Haught Jr., 42, of College Park, Md., pleaded not guilty in Woburn District Court on Tuesday to several charges, including armed assault and operating without a license. Police said Haught had sped away from the Burlington Mall at about 7 p.m. and then hit a parked police cruiser and led police on a high-speed chase during which officers fired at him. Police said Haught’s vehicle struck two other cars, sending one person to Lahey Hospital and Medical Center with injuries that were not considered life-threatening."
