Five Haitian-American teenagers who had rented a Florida hotel room for a birthday party died of carbon monoxide poisoning when they left their car idling in the garage below, police said Tuesday.
Juchen Martial and four friends had borrowed the car and rented the room to celebrate his 19th birthday on Sunday night, the day after Christmas. They were found dead in an exhaust-filled room the following afternoon.
"The room where they were staying was immediately above the one-car garage on the ground floor," police spokesman Carl Zogby told AFP, adding that the car was still idling when police arrived.
"We had to clear the air before we could go in," he said. "Carbon monoxide is colorless and odorless but there was definitely exhaust fumes in there."
He said the five close friends were all first- or second-generation Haitian-Americans from the Little Haiti neighborhood in Miami, in the southern US state of Florida.
"They were always together. So one of them turned 19, so I guess they decided to go out and celebrate together," Zogby said.
The Miami Herald newspaper quoted a friend of the boys as saying they had left the car, a red Kia Optima, running because the engine had died earlier that evening and they were worried it would not start again.
Police said there was no evidence of drugs or alcohol, and the Herald said bags of half-eaten McDonald's food were found at the scene.
"They killed my son, they killed my son," Immacula Nazon, 38, the mother of one of the boys, cried out in Creole in the hotel parking lot on Monday.
"I feel so bad because all this morning I called the phone. Nobody answered," she was quoted by the Herald as saying.
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