Family: 5 dead in Fla. motel were like brothers

MIAMI (AP) — Five young men who police said died of carbon monoxide poisoning in a South Florida motel room were constant companions who acted like brothers and even went shoe shopping together before Christmas so they all would have the same pair, relatives said Tuesday.

They were celebrating a birthday Sunday night when they were overcome by carbon monoxide from a car they left running in a garage under their Hialeah motel room, police said. The teens’ friends told police that the car was having engine trouble, and they had probably left it running so that they wouldn’t get stuck with a car that wouldn’t start, police spokesman Carl Zogby said.

Authorities identified the dead as Juchen C. Martial, 19; Peterson Nazon, 17; Jonas Antenor, 17; Jean Pierre Ferdinand, 16; and Evans Charles, 19. All lived within blocks of each other in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood.

The group rented the room Sunday around 9 p.m. to celebrate Martial’s 19th birthday.

Nazon’s family said they had seen one of the teens driving the car just before Christmas. When the car showed up in news reports after the five bodies were found Monday, Nazon’s mother knew something was wrong. She had been calling her youngest child’s phone all morning, but he never answered.

No drugs or alcohol were found in the room, and there was no sign of foul play.