A mum who forgave her husband after their twin babies died when he left them in a hot car as he drove to work – and forgot to take them to nursery – is calling on the US to bring in the Hot Cars Act to stop similar deaths.
Marissa Quattrone Rodriguez said her world ended in July 2019 and now everything in her life is divided into “before and after the twinkies passed”.
Little Luna and Phoenix, a girl and boy, were aged just one when their father, Juan, accidentally forgot to drop them off at daycare before going to work in New York.
Instead, the babies were mistakenly left in the car – where the temperature rose steadily to a deadly heat.
“The moment I heard the news, I honestly could not believe what Juan was telling me was real,” Marissa said.
“I could tell how much panic and pain was in his voice, but I just couldn’t bring myself to believe it.”
She had been at work when Juan, who had spent the day counselling disabled veterans at a hospital, called her to tell her to pick up the kids from daycare.
It wasn’t an unusual request. The pair communicated about who would collect the children on a regular basis.
“I said no problem, and carried on with my work,” Marissa recalls.
“I was on a work-related call, when he called back just a moment later, so I missed his call. But I saw he left a message, which he never does, and then he called me again. Clearly it was an emergency.
“I answered that time to hear him repeatedly say: ‘My love, oh my God, my love… I killed the babies’. He said the same thing over and over. And I just kept saying ‘no, no, no. It’s not true’.”
It was only after Juan had looked in the rearview mirror of his Honda sedan after his shift that he realised he’d never taken the babies to childcare that day.
