FAYETTEVILLE, W.Va. — Fayette County Sheriff Steve Kessler said Wednesday afternoon a preliminary autopsy report shows two young children who died Tuesday didn’t suffer from trauma.
The 1-year-old girl and 3-month-old boy were found unconscious and unresponsive in a mobile home in the Mountainair Mobile Home Park in Hilltop. First responders performed CPR but the children were pronounced dead at an Oak Hill hospital.
Sheriff Kessler said that preliminary autopsy report also shows that for now investigators can rule out anything with suffocation or strangulation.
The sheriff said investigators are waiting on toxicology reports that will likely take several days.
“A final determination of the cause and manner of death cannot be made until toxicology tests have been completed,” said Sheriff Kessler. “Basically the laboratory will be testing samples of hair, blood and urine in an effort to determine if these infants ingested or were exposed to any toxic substances- drugs, poison or something else- that caused their deaths.”
“These tests take time,” Kessler said “Everyone involved in this tragic incident- the parents and family members of the infant children, law enforcement and the public- wants to know how and why these children died. Until these necessary tests are completed we won’t know the answers to these questions, and we’re not going to speculate about a cause and manner of death until these answers are known.”