The seven members of a Honduran family who were found dead last Saturday at their Minnesota home died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, local authorities confirmed.
Those close to the Hernandez-Pinto family found them dead Saturday night in their duplex in South Moorhead when they went to search the location after hearing from them.
The house had no signs of violence.
The seven victims were a married couple,
Belin Hernandez (37) and Marleny Pinto (34),
with three children
, Breylin (16), Mike (7) and Marbely (5),
an uncle
, Eldor Hernández Castillo (32)
and a niece
, Mariela Guzman Pinto (19).
[The community organizes to repatriate the bodies of the Honduran family found dead in their home in Minnesota]
They raise money to repatriate the Honduran family who allegedly died of carbon monoxide inhalation
Dec. 21, 202102: 20
Officials with the Ramsey County Medical Examiner's Office in St. Paul examined blood samples from the victims to establish the cause of death.
Those tests showed a lethal level of carbon monoxide
, authorities said.
Police Chief Shannon Monroe said the carbon monoxide may have come from the oven in the house or from a pickup truck in the garage.
Technicians could not find a defect in the furnace that would have generated carbon monoxide, The Associated Press reported.
Moore said more tests were underway to determine whether the victims had hydrogen cyanide in their blood, which the truck would point to, and results could take up to eight weeks.
The family came from the area of the town San Francisco de Yojoa, Cortés, Honduras.
Belin Hernandez and Marleny Pinto had been in the United States for more than seven years, where they emigrated in search of job opportunities with their eldest daughter.
Two Honduran parents and their children were found dead in their home Saturday night in Minnesota. Hernández Pinto Family / Gentileza Noticias Digital Honduras
The couple settled in the town of Moorhead, a city in northwestern Minnesota, where their two youngest children were born.
Later, Eldor Hernández Castillo, Belin's brother, and a niece of the couple, Mariela Guzman Pinto, settled with them.
From the first moment, relatives and close associates indicated that they believed they had died in their sleep from poisoning while trying to heat their home, but the final autopsies were pending.
Moorhead Police had indicated that no signs of trauma were found in the victims and that there were also no signs of forced entry into the home.
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