Three men were found dead inside a car in southern Stockton over the weekend, police said.
Officers and medical personnel responded to reports of multiple people found unresponsive inside a car near Union Street and Scotts Avenue shortly after 10 a.m. Sunday, the Stockton Police Department said.
When officers arrived, they reportedly found three men inside the car. None appeared to have signs of trauma, police said, and it was not immediately clear what caused the men’s deaths.
The San Joaquin County Medical Examiner’s Office on Tuesday identified the men found dead inside the car as Carmelino Jimenez Aguilar, 39; Pedro Gonzalez Perez, 24; and Pable Diaz Lopez, 28. All were identified as Stockton residents.
Mike Bitle, the supervising investigator for the Medical Examiner’s Office, said Wednesday that cause of death has not yet been determined for the three men.
But on Sunday night, Stockton Vice Mayor Jason Lee posted on social media that the deaths may have been fentanyl related.
“This is heartbreaking,” Lee said in the social media post. “Fentanyl continues to devastate families in our community. If this is confirmed to be an overdose, it is yet another reminder that this crisis is real, it is deadly, and it is happening right here in our neighborhoods.”
Lee represents Stockton’s south side in District 6, where the three men were found dead.
Toxicology reports had not yet come back on the men, Bitle said, and the information that the vice mayor posted about did not come from the Medical Examiner’s Office.
“We do not release that kind of information unless we know for a fact that was the cause of death,” Bitle said. “We only release info to the media, not the vice mayor of Stockton or the mayor. As soon as we identify the victim and notify the next of kin we deal directly with the news. We don’t release cause of death until it is confirmed, in most cases in 6-8 weeks.”
“(Lee’s alleged preliminary report) wouldn’t have been from me or management here,” Bitle said.
Lee referred all questions about the incident to his publicist, who did not immediately respond.