FLORIDA COP'S WIFE DIES TRAPPED IN BACK OF HUSBAND'S POLICE CAR

Cop's wife dies while trapped in rear of sweltering police SUV

By Bruce Golding

New York Post
August 24, 2020


The wife of a Florida cop died after getting trapped inside his police SUV as the temperature outside soared into the 90s, according to a report Monday.

Clara Paulino’s fingerprints were found all over the interior of the Ford Explorer following the horrifying incident outside their Miami Shores home Friday, the Miami Herald reported.

“Clearly, she was panicked and trying to get out,” a law enforcement source told the paper.

Paulino, 56, apparently climbed into the back seat while looking for something, then got trapped there by the door’s latching mechanism, which prevents it from being opened from the inside.

Paulino wasn’t carrying a cellphone and a safety partition prevented her from reaching over the front seat to honk the horn for help, according to the Herald.

“It’s literally a cage,” one Miami cop said of the patrol vehicle’s rear seat.

Paulino’s husband, Aristides Paulino, who’s been a Miami cop for 25 years, was asleep in their home following a midnight shift when the tragedy unfolded Friday afternoon, according to the Herald.

Aristides, 58, and the couple’s son found Clara’s body around 5:30 p.m. — as many as 4½ hours after she got trapped, the paper said.

It’s unclear why she went into the SUV, which her husband left unlocked in their driveway when he returned home and went straight to bed late Friday morning, sources told the Herald.

Investigators were treating Clara’s death as an accident but it remained under investigation by the Miami-Dade Police Department’s Homicide Bureau.

“It’s very preliminary,” a police spokesman, Lt. Carlos Rosario, told the Herald.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done. But right now, it’s an unclassified death.”
Aristides and Clara Paulino married 38 years ago, the paper said.

Their son, also named Aristides, told the Herald that the family didn’t want to discuss her death.

“We haven’t even buried her yet and it’s a lot [of] pain,” he said.