Two children who appeared to have frozen to death while living in a van in Detroit last month actually died of carbon monoxide toxicity, officials say.
The causes of death for 2-year-old A’millah Currie and 9-year-old Darnell Currie Jr. were certified on Wednesday and deemed to be the toxicity and an accident, according to a news release from the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office.
On Feb. 10, the children’s family was parked at the Hollywood Casino at Greektown when their car stopped running in the middle of the night, officials have previously said. The temperatures that day were in low-to mid-teens. Darnell Currie Jr. and A’millah Currie later reportedly stopped breathing and died.
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The family was unhoused, authorities said. The two children were living in the van with their mother, their grandmother, and three other children. Authorities haven’t said what went wrong with the van.
The Detroit Police Department said Wednesday it received the medical examiner’s report and said it will continue investigating and submit its findings to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office. City officials could not be reached on Wednesday evening.
The Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office previously said the investigation into the official cause of death could take several months. But in the meantime, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan last week announced a seven-point plan to address holes in the city’s response to homelessness after it was revealed Tateona Williams, the children’s mother, had contacted city and county services for help several times prior to the Currie siblings’ tragic death.
Duggan said the city will expand the hours of a housing help line to 24 hours and seven days a week, will begin efforts to identify families living in vehicles, and will treat every call that involves children as an emergency, even if they are still housed.
Williams sought help dating back to December 2022. Among her attempts include contacting the city’s homeless hotline twice in December 2023 and twice more in the summer of 2024, the city said. There were attempts to contact Williams that spring, but its homeless response team was unable to reach her.
Duggan said the last time Williams called the city’s homeless response team was Nov. 25, 2024, to say she believed her family would soon lose shelter. Her case wasn’t deemed an emergency and no one was sent to assess their situation. A phone operator classified the case as one in which the caller would lose housing within 14 days. No one followed up after that, Duggan said.
In the weeks after the tragedy, leaders of homeless service agencies have said the way people get into shelter is “broken” and have called for more money and resources to address the need. And within the last year, the city added over 110 new shelter beds and created a 24-hour outreach team. Williams’ family still fell through the cracks.
This story has been updated to add new information.
Free Press staff writers Nushrat Rahman and Violet Ikonomova contributed to this report.
Andrea Sahouri covers criminal justice for the Detroit Free Press. Contact her atasahouri@freepress.com or on X:@andreamsahouri.