Three disabled individuals died after being left in a running vehicle in an apartment garage

“Truly an awful situation.” That was how FOX 13 reporter Mythili Gubbi opened her report from an apartment complex in West Valley City, where police say three disabled individuals were found dead inside a vehicle that had been left running.

The first details were already hard to absorb. Gubbi said the men were brought to the complex by a driver working for a transportation company, left inside the vehicle for about an hour and a half, and were dead by the time the driver returned.

West Valley City police initially described it as an accidental carbon monoxide incident, and even in those early moments, you could hear how careful officials were being with what they knew versus what they didn’t.

But the deeper investigators went, the more the story sharpened into something far more specific – and far more alarming.

What Police Say Happened Inside The Garage

In Gubbi’s report, West Valley City spokesperson Sam Johnson explained that a driver employed by a transportation company that serves disabled adults picked up three adult men from three different assisted living facilities.

Johnson said the employee stopped at his own home at the apartment complex and went inside, leaving the three men in the parked vehicle with the engine running.

That one decision – engine on, vulnerable passengers still inside, driver gone – sits at the center of everything that followed.

Johnson said the employee reported returning one to two hours later and finding all three men deceased in the vehicle.

Gubbi reported that police and fire arrived around 2 p.m. Friday to three people who were not breathing.

Even in the initial coverage, the unknowns were unsettling. Gubbi said it wasn’t clear whether the garage was open or closed at the time, and officials weren’t yet naming the company or the driver.

Johnson emphasized there was no danger to anyone else, and he added a key point about what investigators believed caused the deaths: the car was running, and that would be the source of carbon monoxide.

If you’ve ever heard carbon monoxide described as a “silent killer,” this is the kind of case people mean. It doesn’t announce itself with flames or smoke in the way people expect danger to look. It just fills space, and then it steals time.

And when time is what you need most – when people inside that vehicle might not have been able to speak up, open doors, or fully understand what was happening – every minute becomes a wall closing in.

The Update: An Arrest, Names, And Serious Charges

In a later update written by Ryan Marion, FOX 13’s reporting became far more detailed, including the driver’s identity, the time window, and the charges.

Marion reported that Isaiah Pulu, 25, was arrested and booked on three counts of manslaughter and three counts of aggravated abuse of a vulnerable adult.

Police, Marion said, allege Pulu left three disabled patients inside a running van for over three hours while it was inside the apartment complex garage, leading to their deaths.

The men who died were identified by Marion as 25-year-old Colton Moser, 22-year-old Mosa’ati Moa, and 39-year-old Tim Jones.

That detail makes the tragedy feel even heavier, because it turns “three people” into three human lives with ages, families, histories, and routines that ended in a place they likely never imagined would be dangerous.

Marion reported officers were called to the Pinnacle Highbury complex around 2:00 p.m. after the men were found unresponsive and not breathing inside the van.

The driver, Marion wrote, worked for a service that transports disabled adults, and the men came from different assisted living facilities.

That last part matters, because it suggests these weren’t three friends traveling together by choice; they were three individuals placed into the same van because of a service meant to keep them safe.

The Timeline Investigators Are Focusing On

Marion’s report laid out what police said happened earlier that day.

Police said Pulu stopped at his home at the apartment complex and parked inside the garage around 10:00 a.m., leaving the engine running with the men still inside.

The windows were reportedly rolled down, which some people might cling to as a sign the driver didn’t think this was dangerous.

But an idling vehicle in a garage is not a small risk, even with windows down, because carbon monoxide doesn’t care about intentions. It cares about ventilation, air flow, and whether the space traps exhaust.

Marion reported that booking documents say Pulu told police the garage door was open when he left.

But when he returned around 1:30 p.m., he found the garage door closed – and the three men dead.

That detail creates a chilling hinge point in the story: if the garage door was open, who closed it, when, and why? Was it automatic? Did someone else close it without realizing anyone was inside? Was it a malfunction? Or is there disagreement about what was open and what was not?

Those are questions investigators will likely fight over, because they matter to culpability, negligence, and how the final minutes unfolded.

Still, even the “best-case” version is grim: leaving vulnerable adults in a running vehicle while you go inside for a long stretch is the kind of decision that can only end safely if nothing else goes wrong.

And in real life, something always goes wrong.

“Such A Tragedy,” And The Questions Still Hanging

In Gubbi’s report, Johnson called it “such a tragedy,” and that phrase didn’t sound like a routine soundbite. It sounded like a person trying to put a human frame around something that’s hard to explain without getting angry.

Gubbi also stressed what police did not yet know at the time: whether charges would be filed, and what circumstances led up to the incident beyond the basic outline.

By the time of Marion’s update, charges had arrived, and they were serious.

But even with an arrest, there are still layers that will likely haunt this case for a long time.

For example: what oversight did the transportation company have? What training did the driver receive? What policies existed to prevent leaving clients unattended – especially in a running vehicle, and especially in an enclosed or semi-enclosed garage space?

These are not “nice to have” questions. These are the questions that separate an organization that protects vulnerable people from one that merely moves them from place to place.

And if the facts are as police allege, it’s hard not to think that multiple safety systems failed at once – human judgment, workplace standards, and maybe even mechanical or building features like the garage door.

The State Response And A Licensing Crackdown

Marion reported that FOX 13 requested comment from the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, and the department issued a statement acknowledging the deaths.

DHHS said it is aware of the incident and emphasized that the health and safety of people being served is at the core of its work, adding that when safety is compromised and lives are lost, “we feel it deeply.”

They also said their hearts go out to families and loved ones as they face what the statement called an unimaginable loss.

The part of the response that signals immediate action came next.

Marion reported that DHHS’s Division of Licensing and Background Checks issued a Notice of Emergency Agency Action against Safe and Sound Services, LLC involving its day treatment license.

According to the department’s statement as Marion presented it, the emergency action prohibits the provider from serving any new people under its day treatment license for 30 days while the state conducts a full investigation.

DHHS said further licensing action could follow if the provider is found out of compliance with state rules and regulations.

That kind of move doesn’t bring anyone back, but it does signal that the state believes this is serious enough to justify emergency restrictions right away, before a longer investigation plays out.

And frankly, in a case involving disabled adults and alleged neglect, the bar for “urgent” should be low. You don’t wait for perfect information when vulnerable people might still be at risk.

A Preventable Kind Of Horror

It’s hard to read the timeline and not feel that this tragedy sits in the category of the preventable.

There are accidents where a freak chain of events creates danger nobody could foresee. This doesn’t read like that.

This reads like a basic safety truth being ignored: do not leave people – especially people who rely on you – alone in a running vehicle, and do not treat a garage like an outdoor parking space.

Even if the garage door truly was open at 10:00 a.m., relying on it staying open for hours is like relying on a stranger never walking by and touching a switch.

And beyond that, there’s a deeper moral weight here because these were disabled adults being transported by a service designed for their needs.

When a person is hired to transport vulnerable adults, the job isn’t just driving. It’s custody. It’s care. It’s responsibility.

A van becomes more than a van – it becomes a temporary safe space, and it should be treated with the same seriousness as a medical waiting room or a supervised facility.

What Comes Next In The Investigation

Gubbi closed her report by saying there was still a lot unknown, including whether charges would be filed and what circumstances led to the deaths.

Marion’s update answered the “charges” question with a clear yes, but it also opened new areas investigators will likely focus on: the garage door’s status, the precise duration, and the procedures of the transportation service.

Pulu, Marion wrote, was interviewed and arrested hours later, and he was being held without bail at the time of that report.

There will almost certainly be courtroom fights over intent, over recklessness, over what the driver believed was safe, and over what the company required or failed to require.

But in the background, the hardest part remains the simplest: three men got into a van under the assumption that the adults in charge would keep them safe, and they never made it out alive.

That kind of trust, once broken in such a devastating way, doesn’t just damage one family.

It shakes an entire community that depends on these services every day, and it forces people to ask whether “care” systems are actually built to protect – or just built to function until something goes terribly wrong.