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Thread: Maria Fernandes (32)- left the car running and was overcome by carbon monoxide and spilled gas

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    Senior Member bermstalker's Avatar
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    Maria Fernandes (32)- left the car running and was overcome by carbon monoxide and spilled gas

    Such a sad story. This poor lady.

    Maria Fernandes worked four jobs, including shifts at two different Dunkin Donuts.

    Often she drove from job to job, stopping along the road to catch a couple hours sleep, police said. She kept a container of gasoline in her 2001 Kia Sportage because occasionally she ran out of gas, authorities said.

    Early Monday, the 32-year-old Newark woman pulled into a lot off Route 1 & 9 in Elizabeth for a nap. She apparently left the car running and was overcome by carbon monoxide mixed with fumes from the gas can that had overturned, police said. Fernandes was found dead in the car about eight hours later.

    "This sounds like someone who tried desperately to work and make ends meet, and met with a tragic accident," Elizabeth police Lt. Daniel Saulnier said.

    An autopsy today failed to determine the cause of death, and police are awaiting results of toxicology tests, Saulnier said. He said no foul play is suspected.

    At 3:51 p.m., city EMTs responded a 911 call of a woman found in a vehicle in a corner of the WAWA convenience store on the northbound side of Routes 1 & 9. Emergency workers found all the windows and doors on the vehicle closed and when they got inside, they were hit with a chemical odor, authorities said.

    After determining the woman in the vehicle, later identified as Fernandes, was dead, the emergency responders called in Union County's Hazmat workers.

    City police and firefighters, and staff from the county medical examiner's office, waited four hours while Hazmat members monitored the levels of the odors until they determined it was safe for others to enter the Kia, authorities said.

    New Jersey has tens of thousands of people working multiple jobs, said Carl Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

    "These are are folks who would like to work full-time but they can't find the jobs," Van Horn said. "They wind up in these circumstances in which they are exhausted. More commonly it creates just an enormous amount of stress," he said.

    Many people have been forced to work two or three part time jobs after losing a full-time position in the recession of 2008.http://www.nj.com/union/index.ssf/20...l#incart_river


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    Senior Member bermstalker's Avatar
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    Some articles with Maria's coworkers talking about her.
    http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/20...elated_stories

    “She used to work like three shifts every day,” said Parth Patel, who worked alongside Fernandes at Penn Station. “Sometimes she wouldn’t sleep for five days.”

    This Friday, however, was going to be special.

    The 32-year-old city resident had taken the entire day off, telling coworkers that she planned to spend it celebrating Michael Jackson’s birthday.
    While pleasant, coworkers said Fernandes spoke little about her personal life. They learned that she had been born in Portugal, and immigrated to Massachusetts before settling in North Jersey.

    Parth said she had been saving the money she earned at her various jobs, and had just recently purchased the 2001 Kia Sportage where she was found Monday night. It was unclear whether she lived alone or with others, but she often spoke fondly of animals, including dogs and cats she kept at as pets.

    “She was just a nice human being,” he said. “She was everywhere, she used to do everything. And the good thing was, she never called out.”

  3. #3
    What do you care? Boston Babe 73's Avatar
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    Terrible
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    That is too pretty to be shoved up an ass.
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    You can take those Fleets and shove them up your ass



  4. #4
    Administrator Olivia's Avatar
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    Sad article. Was she sleeping with the car running so that it wouldn't be hot?


    Her name was Maria Fernandes. She was 32 years old.She worked amid the throngs of passengers in the heart of Newark's Pennsylvania Station, serving pumpkin lattes and toasted bagels, and dreaming of life somewhere else.

    She dreamed of the bustling streets of Los Angeles and the leafy towns of Pennsylvania. She dreamed of working two jobs, not three. She dreamed of sleeping, really sleeping, for six or seven hours at a stretch.

    But dreams rarely pay the rent. So Fernandes worked three jobs, at three Dunkin' Donuts stores in northern New Jersey, shuttling from Newark to Linden to Harrison and back. She often slept in her car - two hours here, three hours there - and usually kept the engine running, ready in an instant to start all over again.

    Her landlady, Amelia Resende, said that Fernandes slept in her running SUV so often that she started keeping a container full of fuel in the back. Her boyfriend Carter warned that this wasn't safe, but Fernandes brushed aside his concerns. She couldn't run the risk of waking up to an empty tank.

    The last day of her life was no different. She got off work at 6am on Monday, August 25, and climbed into her 2001 Kia Sportage, officials from the Elizabeth Police Department said. She was dreaming again, this time about taking a break to celebrate a milestone with friends. But first, she told Carter, during a brief mobile phone conversation, she was going to take a nap.

    She pulled into the parking lot of a Wawa convenience store, reclined in the driver's seat and closed her eyes. The store's surveillance camera videotaped her arrival at 6.27am.

    Detectives would pore over those tapes after her body was found later that day. It was the last image that anyone would see of her alive.

    In death, Fernandes has been held up as a symbol of the hardships facing America's army of low-wage workers. Her friends say she earned little more than $US8.25 ($9.50) an hour - New Jersey's minimum wage - and passed her days and nights in a blur of iced coffees and toasted breakfast sandwiches, coffee rolls and glazed jelly doughnuts.

    Customers might have remembered her dark eyes and that smile when she handed them change across the counter. She worked afternoons in Newark, overnights in Linden and weekends in Harrison.

    In a statement, Michelle King, a spokeswoman for Dunkin' Brands, said that Fernandes' managers described her as a "model" employee. (King said she could not say how much Fernandes earned or describe the specific hours she worked, saying that only the three franchisees that directly employed Fernandes had that information. King declined to provide contact information for those franchisees.)

    But Fernandes was more than an emblem of America's rising economic inequality. She was Maria, the bubbly woman who worried about her weight, doted on her pet Chihuahua and three cats and fed cast-aside bits of bagels and bread to the neighbourhood birds.

    She adored Michael Jackson and his music. And she took pains to help anyone who needed it, regularly paying for coffee and doughnuts for a homeless man, even when she fell behind on her bills. (He showed up at her funeral this month, to pay his respects.)

    She was looking to start over, but starting over isn't easy when you're always falling behind.

    Fernandes, who was born in Massachusetts to Portuguese-born immigrants, did not have a college education. She wanted to become a beautician and hair stylist, but didn't have enough money for cosmetology school.

    She took her first job with Dunkin' Donuts in Linden four years ago, according to the spokeswoman, King. About 18 months ago, she added the jobs in Newark and Harrison. She never grumbled, said Barra, a neighbour in an apartment above Fernandes'. But it wasn't enough.

    Her landlady, Amelia Resende, said Fernandes fell behind on her rent a couple of times this year, struggling to come up with $US550 a month for the basement apartment in Newark that she rarely slept in. Carter, her boyfriend, said that she was hoping to move to Pennsylvania, where he lives.

    Resende said that Fernandes slept in her running SUV so often that she started keeping a container full of fuel in the back. Carter warned that this wasn't safe, but Fernandes brushed aside his concerns. She couldn't run the risk of waking up to an empty tank.

    "She had to go to work," Resende said.

    The text landed in Carter's phone at about 6:45am on her last morning. It was from Fernandes, who had just wrapped up her overnight shift.

    "You can call me," she wrote.

    He called and they talked. She had an afternoon shift ahead and she wanted to exercise before then, if possible. But first, she wanted to sleep.

    Carter thinks now about their dreams of finding a place together in Hershey, Pennsylvania; about her plans to celebrate Michael Jackson's birthday with friends later that week; about all that was left unsaid and undone.

    But on that morning, he just promised to call back later.

    It was a Wawa employee, on his way to work, who noticed Fernandes about an hour after that conversation. She was lying motionless in her SUV, which was parked behind the store, police records show. He said he thought she was sleeping and went inside.

    When he finished his shift around 3:30 p.m., the Wawa employee noticed that Fernandes was still there. This time, though, she was foaming at the mouth. His manager called 911.

    Emergency responders found the petrol can open and overturned in the cargo hold and the SUV filled with fumes, in what police said appeared to have been an accident. As commuters streamed by her counter in Newark, Fernandes was pronounced dead at 5.56pm. She was still in her uniform.


    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/maria-fe...#ixzz3EkkLUMBz

  5. #5
    Senior Member UncomfortablyNumb's Avatar
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    Stuff like this makes me so sad.
    Quote Originally Posted by bowieluva View Post
    She transitioned from a stupid asshole to a dumb bitch.

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    Senior Member bermstalker's Avatar
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    I have so much compassion for this lady. It really sounds like she was used by everyone when all she tried to do was help others out.

    There are lots of pictures at this link
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-children.html

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    What do you care? Boston Babe 73's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bermstalker View Post
    I have so much compassion for this lady. It really sounds like she was used by everyone when all she tried to do was help others out.

    There are lots of pictures at this link
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-children.html
    Christ almighty. This just makes it all the sadder
    Quote Originally Posted by Nic B View Post
    That is too pretty to be shoved up an ass.
    Quote Originally Posted by Nic B View Post
    You can take those Fleets and shove them up your ass



  8. #8
    Administrator Olivia's Avatar
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    Berm - that's so sad. She was basically paying these men to love her.

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    Senior Member UncomfortablyNumb's Avatar
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    I wish I hadn't read that. What a giving person she seemed to be. Sad panda is sad.
    Quote Originally Posted by bowieluva View Post
    She transitioned from a stupid asshole to a dumb bitch.

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    Moderator nestlequikie's Avatar
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    I hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to. - Donnie Darko

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