Authorities say the autopsies of 4 kids are inconclusive in one of S.A.’s worst-ever murder-suicides
A family of six was found dead June 4 in the garage of a home in the 100 block of Red Willow. Police believe the parents killed their four children, but autopsy reports released Wednesday said medical examiners could not determine what caused the kids’ deaths.
Mike Fisher /Mike Fisher /Staff
The Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office could not say for certain what caused the death of four young children believed killed by their parents in their Northwest Side home last summer, according to autopsy reports released Wednesday.
The reports showed that Army Staff Sgt. Jared Esquivel Harless and Sheryll Ann Harless, the parents, died of carbon monoxide poisoning, while the cause of death for their children, who ranged from 11 months to 4 years old, was undetermined.
The children bore no signs of trauma but might have suffered a “lethal toxic ingestion” or “asphyxial-type death” in what police have described as the worst murder-suicide in San Antonio in decades.
Read on ExpressNews.com: S.A. law enforcement detail their next steps in the investigation of the grisly murder-suicide
Tubing connected the exhaust pipe to the interior of the vehicle where the entire family was found dead, but the autopsies did not find the children died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Investigators believe the parents killed the children and then themselves but were hoping for toxicology testing to tell “if there’s any other foreign substances in the body that may have been used to incapacitate or render somebody unconscious,” San Antonio Police Department spokesman Lt. Jesse Salame said at the time.
Jared Harless, 38, and Sheryll Harless, 36, were found in the back of their SUV in the garage of their home on June 4 along with their children, Esteban Lorenzo Harless, 4; Penelope Arcadia Harless, 3; Avielle Magdalena Harless, 1 year, 11 months, and Apollo Harless, 11 months.
Two cats also were found dead in the vehicle.
