Why Did No One Check The Trunk?

Investigators and residents of Camden, New Jersey, want to know why no one bothered to open the trunk of an abandoned car where three young boys missing for two days were discovered dead.

Autopsies on the boys showed they died from accidental suffocation, not foul play, said Camden County Prosecutor Vincent Sarubbi.

Sarubbi said investigators believe Daniel Agosto, 6, his 5-year-old friend Jesstin Pagan and 11-year-old Anibal Cruz entered the trunk while playing and the trunk accidently slammed shut on them.

The heart-wrenching search for the youths came to a horrifying end Friday when the father of one of the victims finally searched the trunk of the beat up Toyota Camry, which was parked in tall grass in the same yard where the boys were last seen.

Officials believe the car had been searched earlier in the hunt, but the trunk was overlooked. A neighbor was watching when David Agosto made the tragic discovery.

"I saw him open the trunk and he just started screaming and he collapsed to the ground," said Carmen Villa, 37, who lives across the street.

With that, part of the mystery was solved, but in other ways it was only deepened.

"There is much in this situation that defies explanation," said Sarubbi. He said it was unbelievable that hundreds of people could comb the area so intensely and still no one heard or saw anything around the vehicle.

"It's just a tragedy," said Melissa Martinez, 25, weeping as she watched from Villa's front yard across the street as police began cordoning off the scene. "They've been there all the time. We were just standing here yesterday saying `Where could they be?' and the whole time, they were right there. It's just heartbreaking."

The boys vanished without a trace Wednesday night while playing in the yard, according to authorities.

For two days, strangers handed out missing persons fliers to passing motorists, civilians aided in the search and everyone wondered how three children could suddenly go missing at once.

The disappearances triggered a search in which 150 police, firefighters and other law enforcement personnel scoured the neighborhoods of this poor city across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.

But it turned up nothing, until Agosto's father made the grisly discovery. He broke out in tears, throwing himself against a car, and was later taken away on a stretcher by paramedics, crying and flailing his arms and legs.

According to Police Chief Edwin Figueroa, the vehicle, which neighbors said had sat unused in the yard for three months, had been searched before, but apparently the trunk went unchecked.

Cruz and Agosto both lived in the vibrant multiethnic Cramer Hill neighborhood where the bodies were found. Pagan lived in neighboring Mount Ephraim and was visiting Cruz's home when they disappeared.