Scenes of agony at wake for 1-year-old twins left by father in hot car
The line moved swiftly. The closer mourners got to the two open coffins — each covered with a white transparent veil — the louder the sobs became.
Some made it to the end of the line only to change their mind. “I can’t,” they said, walking away instead of seeing Phoenix and Luna Rodriguez one last time during visitation hours Friday at the Sinatra Memorial Home in Yonkers.
The 1-year-old twins died of heatstroke in the Bronx last Friday after their father, Juan Rodriguez, forgot to drop them off at day care and left them in his car as he completed a full shift of work.
The coffins were too large for Luna and Phoenix’s bodies. Small white pillows were placed in each coffin to fill the gaps, one close to each baby’s tiny feet; the other under their heads.
Luna wore a white dress with a knit cream cardigan. She looked as if she were in a profound sleep. A white headband with a flower matched her shiny shoes, which had small flowers on the top.
Phoenix’s head lay not far from his sister’s. He was dressed in a white tuxedo with a small bow tie and pristine white sneakers with a white hat that matched. His long eyelashes were hard to miss.
Those composed enough to make it to the end of the line knelt to say their goodbyes and looked at the infants only briefly, after making the sign of the cross.
Two large hearts made out of pink and blue roses and surrounded by white roses stood beside each coffin. There was a large flower arrangement depicting a white moon, in memory of Luna, whose name means “moon” in Spanish, and a large yellow sun with a phoenix in the middle in honor of Luna’s brother.
A flat TV screen displayed pictures of Luna and Phoenix, playing in a pool, inside an open cardboard box in their pajamas. It was hard to find one where they weren’t smiling.
Juan Rodriguez, who at times stood in front of the line hugging family, colleagues and friends, was in constant motion. He paced around the dimly lit, packed room shouting “Oh! Oh, my God!” in Spanish.
His wife, Marissa A. Rodriguez, sat in the front row, the farthest seat away from the coffins. Rodriguez approached her and kissed her on the forehead and the cheek. Both looked at a collage of their twins’ pictures without speaking as they embraced. They could not look at the coffins.
“Oh, my Luna, oh, my baby! May God bless you,” Caterina Amparo Valerio, the twins’ paternal grandmother, cried in Spanish, as she knelt in front of Luna’s coffin. She placed her hand on the white veil close to Luna’s face, attempting to touch her.
Minutes later, Valerio knelt in front of Phoenix’s coffin, speaking to him in Spanish. “Oh, Phoenix! Oh, God! Oh, forgive us. Oh, I’m not going to be able to see you.”
Rodriguez has told police that last Friday, after dropping his 4-year-old son at day care, he arrived around 8 a.m. at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in the Bronx to work his regular shift as a social worker counseling disabled veterans.
Hours later, he left his job and drove a couple of miles before he discovered his twins were not at day care but were lying unresponsive in the rear of his silver Honda Accord.
Rodriguez jumped out and screamed, alerting a passerby who called emergency services at about 4 p.m. Luna and Phoenix were pronounced dead at the scene.
“I blanked out,” Rodriguez told officials. “My babies are dead. I killed my babies.”
That day, the temperature rose to 86 degrees. When the twins were found, their body temperature was 108 degrees; their organs had failed after several hours strapped inside the sedan, according to the medical examiner.
Rodriguez’s wife has stood by him and called the deaths of their twins a “horrific accident.”
Their father, a 39-year-old veteran who served in the Army in Kuwait from October 2016 to March 2017, has been charged with two counts of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and endangerment of a child. He has pleaded not guilty and was released on bail.
Before joining the Army, Rodriguez obtained his master’s in social welfare at the State University of New York at Albany. Alfredo Angueira, 42, a friend who said he has known Rodriguez for about 20 years and belongs to the same fraternity, “La Unidad Latina,” described him as a responsible father who could not explain what happened.
“In his mind he dropped them off,” Angueira said.
Rodriguez is not the first parent who has left his children inside a broiling car. An average of 38 children die of heatstroke every year, and July is the most common month for deaths of children from hyperthermia after being left in cars.
On Thursday, a composed and somber Rodriguez made his first appearance at Bronx criminal court. He is scheduled to return to court Aug. 27 as prosecutors continue with the investigation, leaving open the possibility that Darcel D. Clark, the Bronx district attorney, could reduce or drop the charges. As of Thursday, a grand jury had not been convened, prosecutors said.
Outside the courthouse, his attorney, Joey Jackson, said Rodriguez had consented to a cellphone and car search and would continue cooperating with the investigation. Jackson called on Clark to do “what we believe is the right thing, and that is, to dismiss these charges.”
Neighbors, colleagues and family members described the Rodriguezes as caring parents. Earlier in July, the parents threw an elaborate carnival-themed birthday party for the twins, complete with an inflatable bouncy house and a cotton-candy machine. Sometimes, Rodriguez would leave work to have lunch with his younger children at day care.
Rodriguez and his wife have not yet addressed reporters, but he was visibly emotional as he held his 4-year-old son and stood beside his two older children, 16 and 12, both from a previous relationship, when Jackson talked to reporters.
“He has nothing at all to harbor or hide, other than to feel misery and sorrow about what happened,” Jackson said.
