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Fatal icy walk leads to murder charge for dad
Source: Agencies |
January 1, 2009, Thursday
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LESS than three weeks after her daughter turned 11, JoLeta Jenks picked out the clothes the girl would be cremated in.
Sage Aragon died, apparently of hypothermia, after she and her 12-year-old brother, Bear, tried to trudge through 16 kilometers of snow on Christmas Day to see their mother in Idaho, the United States, after their father's car got stuck in a snowdrift.
The girl who wanted to be a lawyer when she got older, and then decided she'd rather be a judge, was pronounced dead a short time after a rescue dog found her last Friday.
"She was just starting to grow up," Jenks said on Tuesday. "I don't know why this had to happen."
The boy survived and the children's' father, Robert Aragon, has been charged with second-degree murder and felony injury to a child.
As prosecutors build a case against the father, authorities are trying to nail down an exact timeline of events, such as when the children started walking.
"You try to connect the dots on this thing and you can't, it's just difficult to understand," said Blaine County Sheriff Walt Femling, whose agency handled the search for the children.
Robert Aragon, 55, was being held on US$500,000 bond at the Blaine County Jail, about 95 kilometers north of where mourners gathered yesterday to grieve the death of his daughter.
The children lived with Aragon. He was taking them to visit their mother for the holidays when his 1988 Buick Century got stuck in a snowdrift north of Shoshone.
"I told him there was a storm coming," Jenks told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
After the sedan got caught in the snow, authorities allege Aragon let the children out to walk to their mother's house while he and his cousin Kenneth Quintana, 29, stayed behind to free the car. Jenks said she eventually called Aragon because she was concerned after no one arrived at her home last Thursday.
Aragon had driven back to his hometown of Jerome after letting the kids out to walk to her house, Jenks said.
"I could not believe it," she said.
A visibly upset Aragon cried and banged his head on the defendant's table during an initial appearance on Monday, when a judge said the second-degree murder charge carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Sage Aragon died, apparently of hypothermia, after she and her 12-year-old brother, Bear, tried to trudge through 16 kilometers of snow on Christmas Day to see their mother in Idaho, the United States, after their father's car got stuck in a snowdrift.
The girl who wanted to be a lawyer when she got older, and then decided she'd rather be a judge, was pronounced dead a short time after a rescue dog found her last Friday.
"She was just starting to grow up," Jenks said on Tuesday. "I don't know why this had to happen."
The boy survived and the children's' father, Robert Aragon, has been charged with second-degree murder and felony injury to a child.
As prosecutors build a case against the father, authorities are trying to nail down an exact timeline of events, such as when the children started walking.
"You try to connect the dots on this thing and you can't, it's just difficult to understand," said Blaine County Sheriff Walt Femling, whose agency handled the search for the children.
Robert Aragon, 55, was being held on US$500,000 bond at the Blaine County Jail, about 95 kilometers north of where mourners gathered yesterday to grieve the death of his daughter.
The children lived with Aragon. He was taking them to visit their mother for the holidays when his 1988 Buick Century got stuck in a snowdrift north of Shoshone.
"I told him there was a storm coming," Jenks told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
After the sedan got caught in the snow, authorities allege Aragon let the children out to walk to their mother's house while he and his cousin Kenneth Quintana, 29, stayed behind to free the car. Jenks said she eventually called Aragon because she was concerned after no one arrived at her home last Thursday.
Aragon had driven back to his hometown of Jerome after letting the kids out to walk to her house, Jenks said.
"I could not believe it," she said.
A visibly upset Aragon cried and banged his head on the defendant's table during an initial appearance on Monday, when a judge said the second-degree murder charge carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.
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