Authorities in Toledo, Ohio, confirmed carbon monoxide inside a parked SUV where five people were found unresponsive Wednesday, including three who died in what officials described as a tragic accident.
The group had been traveling in a Ford Explorer that pulled into a parking lot after getting a flat tire, Toledo Fire Chief Allison Armstrong said. Emergency crews found the victims shortly after 11 a.m.
City spokesperson Rachel Hart said the victims were a grandmother and her grandchildren. According to Hart, the woman’s son had been called to assist with the flat tire and discovered them inside the vehicle.
Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz said investigators do not suspect foul play. He said three people were pronounced dead, while two children were taken to a hospital in critical condition. Officials did not immediately release their names, ages or hometowns.
“Today, a family experienced a tragedy that no family should ever have to endure,” the mayor said in a Facebook post.
Armstrong said investigators later restarted the SUV with its doors closed and placed a meter inside the passenger area. During a phone interview, she said the test showed “a high spike of carbon monoxide inside the passenger compartment on that vehicle.”
The vehicle was later towed by police, Armstrong said.
“They’re going to have to do some further investigation to see if they can identify how does that happen,” she said. “I think that’s an important piece of this that people want to know, and they should know for everybody’s safety.”
Armstrong recalled a “very similar” incident several years ago involving carbon monoxide that seeped into holes in the floorboards of a vehicle.
Ford Explorers were part of a previous six-year investigation by the federal government into exhaust odors in passenger cabins.
In 2023, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it reviewed more than 6,500 consumer complaints, tested SUVs in the field and called in automotive, medical, environmental health and occupational safety experts before determining that the SUVs didn’t have high levels of carbon monoxide and didn’t need to be recalled.
The probe covered nearly 1.5 million Explorers from the 2011 to 2017 model years and involved complaints of sickness and crashes that involved three deaths and alleged there were 657 injuries. Many complaints came from police departments that used Explorer Police Interceptors as patrol vehicles.
Armstrong said it wasn’t immediately known what year the SUV involved in Wednesday’s incident was made.
