A delay of more than five hours before an official search was started on Christmas Day for two missing children in the West Magic Reservoir area may have led to the death of an 11-year-old girl.
Blaine County authorities said Tuesday that Sage Aragon, who was pronounced dead from hypothermia on Dec. 26, would have had a greater chance of surviving the ordeal if officials had been notified earlier.
“Absolutely it would have increased her chances for survival,” said Blaine County Sheriff’s Lt. Jay Davis.
The man who had to pronounce young Aragon dead agreed.
“It’s more likely she would have survived had it been investigated earlier,” said Blaine County Coroner Russell Mikel.
Instead, according to the sheriff’s office, the girl’s parents waited more than five hours to contact authorities after they became aware that the children were missing. The girl’s father, Robert E. Aragon, a 55-year-old Jerome man, was charged Monday in Lincoln County with second-degree murder and felony injury to a child.
Robert Aragon allegedly told or allowed Sage and her 12-year-old brother Bear Aragon to start walking some nine miles to meet their mother in the West Magic Reservoir residential area after his vehicle became stuck in snow on Christmas morning on West Magic Road about a mile from its intersection with state Highway 75. The area is south of Timmerman Hill where Blaine, Lincoln and Camas counties meet.
“Lincoln County was where the car got stuck, Camas County was where she was found and BlaineCounty was where she was transported and pronounced dead,” Mikel said.
The sheriff’s office reported that Robert Aragon, who was accompanied by his cousin, Kenneth S. Quintana, a 29-year-old Jerome man, was taking the children to meet their mother when their vehicle, a 1988 Buick Century, became stuck in snow around 9 a.m. on West Magic Road about a mile west of its intersection with state Highway 75. The children started walking to meet their mother at about 9:30 a.m.
Sometime after 10:30 a.m. Aragon and Quintana were able to get the car unstuck and then drove back to the Magic Valley. The sheriff’s office reported that the children’s mother, 32-year-old Joletta M. Jenks, notified Aragon between 1 and 2 p.m. that day that the children hadn’t arrived. Aragon and Quintana then returned to the area and started searching for the children.
The Blaine County Sheriff’s Office wasn’t notified until shortly before 7 p.m. that the children were missing. Blaine County Search and Rescue was then mobilized.
“When we got the call we started moving immediately forward to get the search parameters set up,” Davis said.
Bear Aragon was found cold but alive around 9:15 p.m. in a U.S. Bureau of Land Management bathroom about 4.5 miles from where he’d started walking.
Search dog teams later arrived and Sage Aragon was found at about 2 a.m., some 2.7 miles from where she had started walking.
“She was mostly covered with windblown snow and was barely visible,” the sheriff’s office reported.
Sage Aragon was taken to St. Luke’s Wood River Medical Center and pronounced dead at 4:15 a.m.
Mikel said attempts were made to resuscitate the child but were unsuccessful.
“Hypothermic patients have been revived when there was no detectable respiration or pulse,” Mikel said. “It is possible under the right conditions.”
Mikel said neither of the children was dressed for winter conditions.
The sheriff’s office reported that temperatures in the area on Christmas Day were in the 20s but winds gusting up to 23 miles per hour led to a wind chill factor of five degrees below zero.
The Lincoln County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office did not return a telephone call to the Idaho Mountain Express by press deadline and the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office said it could not respond to questions without permission from Prosecuting Attorney E. Scott Paul.
Robert Aragon was arraigned on the charges Monday before Lincoln County Magistrate Court Judge Mark Ingram.
According to court records, public defender Patrick McMillen was appointed to represent Aragon and bond was set at $500,000. A preliminary hearing was set for Jan. 7. Aragon remained incarcerated Tuesday in the BlaineCounty jail.
A timeline of Sage Aragon
Robert E. Aragon
