(missapril1956's flickr)

Sadly every year when it starts getting cold somebody dies by doing something ill-conceived to stay warm, like using their oven to heat their apartment. And now we have our first such story of the year. During Saturday's snow storm a 21-year-old Guatemalan landscaper died and his cousin was critically injured when they turned on a lawnmower engine in the back of a truck to stay warm.

Jorge Perez and his cousin just wanted to stay warm while their landscaping crew drove from a church in the Bronx to Queens, but things didn't work out as planned. Police say that Perez passed away from carbon monoxide poisoning (his cousin is getting better but has not been told about Perez yet). What's worse, the rest of the crew riding in the front of the truck had no idea what was happening. When the truck stopped at one of the men's homes in Queens another worker came to get them out and "found the two men seated in the same position as they always were. The lawn mower was still running, [his boss] Anibal Angel said, until someone turned it off."

"Jorge was a quiet kid," Angel told the Times. "You don’t have a big conversation with him, but I teach him how to work; and how to do the things." Perez had been in the country for three years. His body is being flown back to his family in Guatemala today.