A distraught mother says she has now forgiven her husband after he accidentally killed their young twins when he left them in a hot car for eight hours.
Marissa Rodriguez’s world was shattered when Juan, 39, ‘forgot’ Luna and Phoenix in the backseat as temperatures rose to 30C in 2019.
The Iraq war veteran left his one-year-old babies in his Honda Accord before he started his long shift at a local hospital in Bronx, New York.
Pleading guilty to two misdemeanor charges, he avoided prison as the judge branding the case a “tragic, unfortunate incident”.
She initially said she would never forgive the man for what had happened.
But two years on, she says she has found the strength to move forward and says they are now focused on remembering their children.
The court heard the father ‘forgot’ his twins were in the car with an internal temperature of 42C.
The mother told 7news : “I realised Juan and I grieve in very different ways. I like to look at photos of happier times. He does not.
“But we are both in agreement that we focus on the twins’ lives, their birthdays and fun memories, and try not to focus on their death or the loss.
“I know Juan would have never hurt our children intentionally. My goal was then to keep him out of jail.”
Ms Rodriguez recalled that day she was at work when her husband called and asked her to pick up the tots from daycare.
After agreeing a setting off to collect them, she then had a number of missed calls from him.
She told the network: “I answered that time to hear him repeatedly say: ‘My love, oh my God, my love… I killed the babies’. He said the same thing over and over. And I just kept saying ‘no, no, no. It’s not true’.”
“The moment I heard the news, I honestly could not believe what Juan was telling me was real.
“I could tell how much panic and pain was in his voice, but I just couldn’t bring myself to believe it.”
Mr Rodriguez is said to have told cops at the scene: “I assumed I dropped them off at day care before I went to work.
“I blanked out. My babies are dead! I killed my babies!”