Autistic man left in hot van dies Saturday

Bryan Nevins' Saturday morning began at Sesame Place, but it ended in hell when the severely autistic man was left to die in a van on a day when the temperature reached 97 degrees.

Now, the Bucks County District Attorney's Office and Middletown Police are investigating whether someone will face charges for what District Attorney David Heckler said was a "terrible" death.

"This poor kid," Heckler said. "It's pretty rough."

Nevins, 20, of Queens, N.Y., was a resident at Woods Services, a Langhorne-based facility that caters to people with autism spectrum disorder, developmental disabilities and traumatic brain injuries. Two Woods counselors took Nevins and three other residents to Sesame Place, in Langhorne, on Saturday morning.

Each counselor was responsible for two residents, police said. When they returned to Woods about noon, the counselor responsible for Nevins dropped her colleague and his two patients off before driving to her patients' building, police said.

Nevins' counselor parked the van but was seen with only one of her patients after that, Middletown Township Detective Jeffry Sproehnle said.

Heckler said Nevins was severely autistic and would not have been able to use the door handles on his own.

Nevins' counselor left work at 3 p.m., and it wasn't until an hour later when a nurse looking to give medications to Nevins realized he was missing, police said. A supervisor found Nevins in the van about 5:45 p.m., more than five hours after he'd been left there.

The counselor responsible for Nevins, whose name was not released, has been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation, said Woods spokeswoman Cheryl Kauffman.

In a statement, Kauffman described Nevins' death as "heart wrenching and devastating."

She said Woods has been cooperating with police and the state Department of Public Welfare. The facility began its own investigation yesterday morning.

Bucks County coroner Joseph Campbell said Nevins died of hyperthermia and ruled that his death was accidental.

The death is the second in the facility's recent history. In November, a 17-year-old resident died when he was struck by at least two cars after he fell or jumped from a highway overpass. The state Welfare Department concluded that staff had done what it could and was not at fault, said spokesman Mike Race.

According to the agency's findings, the disorderly teen ran from an exit door at 1 a.m., setting off alarms and leading to a pursuit by staff members.

Although 24 children across the country have died in hot vehicles this year, adult deaths are unusual, said Jan Null, an adjunct professor of meteorology at San Francisco State University who researches hyperthermia deaths of children in hot vehicles.

"There aren't very many because usually adults can roll down a window, they can call for help," he said.

On a day like Saturday, the temperature in the van could have risen to 29 degrees above the outdoor temperature in the first 30 minutes alone, Null said.

"The first half hour would have been incredibly deadly," he said.

He estimated that the temperature in the van reached 145 to 150 degrees.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.