Moorhead (US): Seven members of an immigrant family from Honduras whose bodies were found inside a Minnesota home last weekend died of apparently accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, authorities said Wednesday.
Relatives of the family discovered the victims Saturday night in a home in south Moorhead when they went to check on them after not hearing from them. Police are still working on a time frame of the deaths but said the three children who lived there were not in school on Friday.
Officials with the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office in St. Paul examined blood samples to determine cause of death. Those tests showed a lethal level of carbon monoxide, authorities said.
Police Chief Shannon Monroe said the carbon monoxide came from either the home’s furnace or a van in the garage. Technicians couldn’t find a defect in the furnace that would have sent carbon monoxide into the home. Moore said further tests were being done to determine whether the victims had hydrogen cyanide in their blood, which would point to the van, and those tests might take up to eight weeks.
“There’s no indication of any kind of criminal activity,” Monroe said. “Unless we find something else yet later in the investigation, right now it’s pointing toward some type of accidental situation.”
