In what is being treated as a horrific accident, the wife of a veteran Miami police officer was found dead in the back of a patrol SUV parked in front of their home Friday.
Clara Paulino, 56, is believed to have climbed into the back seat of the patrol SUV Friday morning after her husband came home from his midnight shift because she was looking for something while her husband slept inside.
But the doors somehow closed, trapping her inside with a self-locking mechanism, according to the Miami Herald.
She was not found until 5 p.m. Friday after a sweltering day of temperatures soaring into the 90s. Miami-Dade police found her fingerprints all over the inside of the vehicle, a sign of her fighting to get out.
According to the Miami Herald.
Her husband, Aristides Paulino, 58, is a 25-year veteran who has worked the midnight shift in the Wynwood neighborhood for most of the past two decades. The couple married 38 years ago.
Their son, also named Aristides Paulino, said Monday that the family wasn’t ready to talk about his mother.
“We haven’t even buried her yet and it’s a lot pain,” he said.
The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office has not yet ruled an official cause of death. We will update this article when it happens.
