Report: Exposure killed 2 children

Two small children found dead in March after the siblings were left in a car for hours in Superior died of exposure, according to autopsy reports released Tuesday by the Pinal County Medical Examiner’s Office.

The reports say 2-year-old Lorenzo Velasquez and 9-month-old Brooklyn Velasquez didn’t have any drugs in their bodies or suffer any trauma.

According to the reports, the Medical Examiner’s Office consulted with Weather Underground, a private company, which reported the temperature to be 71 degrees the day the children were found dead.

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office arrested the mother of the children, Brittany Velasquez, 20, in connection with their death. A grand jury indicted the mother on two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of child abuse. She has pleaded not guilty.

According to a Sheriff ’s Office report, Velasquez told sheriff’s deputies she dropped off her son and daughter with a babysitter at 9:30 a.m. and found them dead at 11 p.m. on March 26, the report says.

Velasquez initially called the Superior Police Department after finding her children, the report says. Superior police later handed the investigation over to the Sheriff’s Office.

The Sheriff’s Office report also says, “It is known that the kids spent several hours in the vehicle as there was condensation on the inside windows of the vehicle and the children were cold to the touch and rigor mortis had already set in.”

Velasquez told investigators she had dropped the children off with a babysitter, whose name is redacted from the report. After she returned from work that night, she told investigators, she found her children in the car. She told deputies the babysitter may have returned that night and left the dead children in the car, the report says.