Minnesota police have confirmed that seven members of the same family all died from carbon monoxide poisoning.

As reported by ABC News, the bodies of the family members - who all lived together - were discovered by relatives in the south Moorhead home on Saturday night. Concerns had been raised after their relatives had not heard from them for some time.

On Wednesday, authorities revealed that the cause of death is currently being investigated as apparent accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. Blood tests carried out by the Ramsey County Medical Examiner's Office in St. Paul found that the deceased family members had been subjected to a lethal level of carbon monoxide.

Police are still working to put together a timeline of the death, after three of the children in the home failed to turn up to school on Friday (December 17).

The deceased family members moved from Honduras in 2013, and have been identified as Belin Hernandez, 37, Marleny Pinto, 34, Eldor Hernandez Castillo, 32, Mariela Guzman Pinto, 19, Breylin Hernandez, 16, Mike Hernandez, 7, and Marbely Hernandez, 5.

Investigators found that the carbon monoxide detector in the garage had been replaced with a smoke-only detector. Additionally, one carbon monoxide detector was found in the laundry room cabinet with its battery removed.

CBS4 adds that four of the deceased family members were found in their beds.

Police Chief Shannon Monroe said at a press conference that the lethal levels of carbon monoxide are believed to have come from a van in the garage or the house furnace. Although, technicians were unable to find a defect in the furnace that could have caused the deadly levels of carbon monoxide to enter the family home.

Further tests are being carried out to determine whether the victims had hydrogen cyanide in their blood, which would lead investigators to believe that the van would be the cause. Chief Monroe added that the van was found with a dead battery - a common factor in cases of intentional carbon monoxide exposure.

However, Monroe also stated that there is currently "no indication of any kind of criminal activity".

"Unless we find something else yet later in the investigation, right now it’s pointing toward some type of accidental situation," Monroe added.

ABC News says that Belin Hernandez and Marleny Pinto were the parents of Breylin, Mike, and Marbely. Eldor Hernandez Castillo was Belin's brother and Mariela Gusman Pinto was Marleny's niece.

Alfredo Hutar, fiancé of Mariela Guzman Pinto, told the Star-Tribune that the tragedy has left loved ones with more questions than answers.

Moorhead Mayor Shelly Carlson also told the Star-Tribune that they are looking at ways to help support the surviving family members moving forward.

Our thoughts are with the family and friends of loss lost in this tragedy.

Featured image credit: Gabor Tinz / Alamy (Stock Image)

A mother has spoken out after she bought a Burger King kids' meal for her daughter and was left horrified to find it was covered in a stranger's blood.

Tiffany Floyd had taken her four-year-old daughter to the drive-through restaurant in Getzville, New York, at around midday on Friday to get some food.

She had given the meal to her child unknowingly, and only realized something was wrong when her daughter complained about there being "ketchup" on her food.

Tiffany explained in a TikTok video that quickly went viral: "I gave her the bag because obviously I'm a busy mom, I just gave her the bag to eat her food and I heard 'Mom, I don't want ketchup.'"

At this point, Tiffany still believed it was simply a mix-up with her order, and took the bag back from her child, when she made the horrifying discovery.

"I look in her bag and there is blood all over her bag, her toy, her fries, everything," the mom continued.

She says she then called the restaurant to complain and was told by the manager that "somebody did cut his hand" and that they would refund her if she came back to the restaurant.

Tiffany also contacted her local health department but revealed there was "not much" they could do besides make a report, but she wanted to raise awareness in case anyone else's food was contaminated during the lunchtime rush.

Tragically, her daughter had already eaten part of the meal when the mom realized it had someone else's blood on it, and now has to wait a month to be tested for any blood-related conditions she may have contracted as a result.

The mom added to the New York Post: "I instantly told her to spit out her food. She did have fries and a bit of her hamburger. And then I looked at my meal, and there was blood on mine too."

Tiffany's daughter will have to undergo a blood test in one month's time, and she added: "And then [she will have to] get her blood work done every so often for a year to see if something comes up."

She claimed that the manager wouldn't disclose who the injured employee was, as she added: "If they just make him go and get tested, my daughter would not have to get pricked."

She also claimed that the local health inspector at the Niagara County Department of Health said “he spoke to the same manager, who said, ‘I did have somebody cut their finger, but they didn’t think they were bleeding that bad.'”

The Niagara County Department of Health has yet to respond publicly.

Tiffany says she contacted Burger King's corporate office on Friday after the incident, and they responded on Saturday to say that they would pay for her daughter's medical expenses.

We did tell Burger King that medical expenses was not enough," the mom said. "And how my daughter has not eaten since this and my anxiety is through the roof and what if my daughter needs professional help from this."

Burger King told the outlet in a statement: "We were deeply upset and concerned to learn of this incident. We have been in contact with the Guest and are working with her to resolve this incident.

"This incident was the result of a team member in the restaurant who injured his finger, and upon noticing immediately stepped away.

"We closed the restaurant to retrain all the team members and hired an external company to complete a deep cleaning. We expect the restaurant to re-open Monday and are fully paying team members for any lost shifts during this temporary shut down."

Featured image credit: Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images

A mom has taken to Facebook to share a warning to all parents and caregivers after she woke up one morning to find that her son had tragically passed away overnight.

Jennifer Ranger of British Columbia bravely took to Facebook to reveal that she had experienced every parent's worst nightmare. Now she is hoping her story can help save the lives of other children.

Starting the heartbreaking 2017 post with a trigger warning, Ranger explains that while everybody is celebrating, she is grieving on what would have been her son's birthday.

Recalling the perfectly normal evening of October 16, 2008, the mom writes: "I put my 2-year-old son to bed in his big boy bed which was pushed up against the wall, complete with a bed rail on the side open to the room. I tucked him in and said goodnight.

"I checked on him at 1 am and saw him sleeping soundly facing the bed rail but still in the middle of the bed. I went to sleep myself.

"A little after 8 am, I woke up and went downstairs. He wasn't stirring yet so I took the time to put the coffee on and go to the bathroom."

However, the family's world would be changed forever after Jennifer decided to check in on her young son.

"I went into his room to wake him and he wasn't in his bed," she recalls. "As I looked for him, I quickly started to panic and then found him between his bed and his wall, with just his head above the mattress.

"I pulled the bed away and grabbed him only to find every parent's worst nightmare."

Jennifer explains that her two-year-old son had passed away at approximately 3:00AM as a result of positional asphyxiation, as she explains: "In layman terms, he became wedged between his bed and the wall and was unable to free himself."

Per Crisis Prevention, positional asphyxiation (or positional asphyxia) is "a deadly condition that can occur when a person being restrained can’t get enough oxygen. This lack of oxygen can lead to disturbances in the rhythm of the heart."

Like every mom out there, Jennifer says that she thought she was doing everything she could to keep her son safe - having both a baby monitor and a bed rail installed in her son's room.

"Everyone I knew (my own parents included) had pushed their young children's beds up against the walls," she writes. "I can still remember the stinging guilt that hit me when the coroner released the report and my son's cause of death was 'positional asphyxiation secondary to unsafe sleeping arrangements.'"

Explaining why she chose to share her story, Jennifer writes: "In light of a recent PSA about baby blankets, I felt like I should tell our story.

"If it saves just one child's life, I will be thankful."

She concludes her heartbreaking post by writing: "Please, make sure your young child's bed is at least 12 inches from other pieces of furniture or walls in their room. It may not be aesthetically pleasing, but it is the safest way.

"He was 2. He could climb stairs up and down, he could build towers out of blocks and chase birds, and was learning to swim. You never think it can happen to your child."

Since sharing her post in July of 2017, it has received over 132,000 shares on Facebook, and over 30,000 comments.

There is no doubt Jennifer's story will have helped save lives.

Featured image credit: Tatiana Syrikova/Pexels

A mother has opened up about her grief after her son died when she forgot him in a hot car.

Raelyn Balfour, now 52, had only realized she had forgotten to drop her nine-month-old son Bryce to his child minder after receiving a call from her asking how he was recovering from his cold, assuming that was why he hadn't been dropped off to her.

As the carer asked how he was, Raelyn responded: "What do you mean? Bryce is with you," before running out to her car in a panic as she tried to remember what she'd done that morning.

Tragically, when she arrived at the vehicle, she saw that Bryce was in his car seat, unresponsive.

She told Fabulous magazine: "I got to the car and my nine-month-old son was still strapped into his car seat.

"He had been there all day. He wasn't moving or breathing. I was hysterical. I screamed for help and for an ambulance."

She immediately started to administer CPR until the ambulance arrived and rushed Bryce to hospital, all the while Raelyn was "wracked with hysteria, it felt like I was living in a nightmare.”

Tragically, despite medics fighting to revive Bryce, he was declared dead shortly after arriving at the hospital.

The incident happened in March 2007 when Raelyn was 36, and the family was living in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Raelyn had driven to work but forgotten to drop Bryce off at the babysitter's home as she usually did each morning.

Bryce had been in the car for seven and a half hours when Raelyn found him, and despite it being just a mild 64 degrees Fahrenheit outdoors, it was ruled that he'd died from hyperthermia inside the car.

Police said that temperatures inside the vehicle could have reached 98 degrees in just 40 minutes of her leaving the car, which is enough to kill a baby inside.

Raelyn, who now lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband Jarrett, 45, and their four children, Christopher, 31, Braiden, 16, Isabella, 15, and Chase, 14, revealed that the guilt of what happened eats at her every day.

She revealed that she still has the "memory of seeing my son not breathing every day," even though it has been 17 years since Bryce died.

"No parent should have to deal with that. No one should have to try to save their child's life from their own terrible mistake," she added.

"I live in hell every day. I live in pain everyday remembering the horror of what happened - the grief and the loss and the knowledge of what I had forgotten. 

"It’s a nightmare you never escape from."

She added that as well as having to live with her own guilt, she also faced cruel judgment from strangers who did not "believe" it was an accident.

Raelyn, who formerly served in the military, was arrested and charged with second degree murder on the day of Bryce's funeral, and faced a potential life sentence of 40 years.

She revealed that she was not even able to grieve for her baby son properly as she was forced to "prove I hadn’t killed him" instead.

Raelyn also faced judgment from people assuming she was a "bad mother" or had "abused" the baby, but her legal team had argued she'd suffered a "false memory" on the morning of Bryce's death as she "distinctly remembered" having dropped him off at his child minder, despite it not having happened.

She explained: "I distinctly remember dropping off Bryce at the babysitter's before driving to work that day. 

"Then I worked all day confident in the knowledge he was safe with the childminder, I was utterly convinced he was there."

False memories can occur when someone remembers and event differently to how it happened, or appears to have a memory of something that never happened at all.

Experts testified that in Raelyn's case, dropping Bryce off in the morning was so routine that her brain had filled the gap in her memory that day, with Raelyn saying there were a few factors which threw off her routine that morning.

She cited being sleep deprived from being up all night with Bryce, who had been unwell with a cold, as well as the fact that her husband had fitted the new carseat behind the driver's seat in her car instead of where it usually was - behind the passenger's seat, which would have been in her eye-line.

She would also usually have had Bryce's diaper bag in the front seat, but had moved it to the back because she'd dropped Jarrett at work that morning, adding: "His nappy bag would have been a trigger for me if he was still in the car. It wasn’t there for me to see like normal."

Experts claimed that Raelyn's brain had interchanged the stop off she made to drop Jarrett to work - which was out of her ordinary routine - with dropping off Bryce.

The baby had also been asleep when she arrived at work, so she didn't hear him in the back of the car, and walked in to start her day as usual.

Raelyn was acquitted by a jury in January 2008, but she says being found innocent "didn't change anything" with regards to how she felt, admitting her "world had fallen apart".

She and her husband Jarrett supported one another through the tragedy and went on to have three more children together,

This year would have been Bryce's 18th birthday, which brought up renewed "grief and sadness" for his mother.

She revealed that she'd made him a promise as she held him for the last time in hospital after his death, that she would dedicate her life to raising awareness of car safety for children and babies in his memory.

Raelyn now campaigns with the charity Kids in Cars, which educates parents about the dangers of leaving children in cars even for short periods of time, as the temperatures inside can quickly reach fatal levels.

She added: "Babies like Bryce cannot regulate their body temperature like teenagers and adults can. A cool temperature is as life threatening as scorching summer sun.

"I paid the ultimate price and I will never have real peace again, I am begging people to be careful.

“The only time I will be able to make amends properly is when I see him in heaven."

Featured image credit: Ryan McVay/Getty Images

An 88-year-old woman was allegedly "left to die" by her carers after she went without food or water for over 25 days, according to her family.

Rob Taylor, a former North Wales rural police officer, explained that his mother, Sarene Thomas, was admitted to an unnamed hospital and they informed him that they were beginning end-of-life care for the 88-year-old following a stroke.

Taylor has expressed his feelings on social media about what he described as the "inhumane" treatment of his mother after she was taken from the hospital and placed in a care home and "left to die".

The former police officer stated that he hasn't shared the story to question the legality of how the 88-year-old was treated but to express his thoughts on the "ethics" of it.

In a video posted to Twitter on March 16, Taylor began by explaining why his mother was in the hospital and that she had a "fantastic life".

"I obviously went up to be with her and spend time with her – on the Monday, which is three weeks gone – and this Monday the doctor told me that there was nothing more they could do for her sadly and all fluids and food were withdrawn and she was put on end-of-life care," Taylor explained.

He had spent a lot of time with her, he said, but he had to attend to something else so left her side and was then informed that he had caught Covid and therefore couldn't return to the hospital for some time.

The former police officer was then informed that he had to take his mother from the hospital and place her in a care home, which he obliged.

Taylor went on to reveal that his mother was "left to die" in an "inhumane" way. He said: "This is not a story about illegality or legality, it’s about ethics. My mom is still alive. 24 to 25 days in without any food, any water, no IV drip, nothing – she’s still alive – and it’s inhumane and absolutely harrowing to the family."

Taylor credited the district nurse that visited his mother once a day and defended their work and explained that his comments are not to attack them or the care home.

"But it’s the ethics that she is just left to die, slowly from dehydration and malnutrition in front of our very eyes," he went on. "This is how you would treat people back in the 11th and 12th century – not 2023. It’s absolutely harrowing."

"There is nothing we can do, absolutely nothing we can do – and they have been wonderful, it’s just that it’s incredible that she’s probably suffering and it’s heartbreaking, it’s absolutely heartbreaking for us."

Taylor posted a follow-up video on March 20 where he revealed that his mother had sadly passed away. He thanked well-wishers for their support while adding that although he hoped that the day would never come, he is comforted knowing that his mother is at peace after her ordeal.

Andrea Hughes, Director of Nursing for Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board’s East Integrated Health Community, said via Metro: "We offer our sincere condolences to Mrs. Taylor’s family for their very sad loss.

"While we cannot comment on individual cases in any detail, we were in daily contact with Mr. Taylor about his mother’s care and we are investigating concerns that he has raised."

Our thoughts are with Sarene Thomas' loved ones at this time.

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