ELMHURST, NY — Two young lovers who stole away for an afternoon tryst in an air-conditioned car were found dead by relatives inside a Queens garage, police said yesterday.

The body of Yen-Chen Hwang, 22, a Marine reservist and a junior at State University of New York at Stony Brook, was found on the floor of his family's garage by an uncle when he arrived home about 9:45 p.m. Wednesday, according to a police source.

The naked lovers appear to have died accidentally from carbon monoxide poisoning.

The uncle, who lives below Hwang's parents in their attached brick house on Aske St. in Elmhurst, alerted the parents.

They arrived to find the slumped body of his girlfriend, Victoria Yan Wang, 23, in the back seat of Hwang's green 1996 Infiniti I30, which was still running, police said.

Investigators said the college sweethearts appear to have died accidentally from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Hwang's parents tried dressing the couple before police arrived.

Both victims were naked, cops said. Police were not notified until nearly an hour later because Hwang's parents tried dressing the couple.

A spokeswoman for the medical examiner's office said autopsies were performed yesterday but the official cause of death was pending.

Only Son Lost
"He was a good student, a good boy. The kind of kid that will call if he's coming home late," a family friend said of Hwang, a business major on summer break who was born in the United States and raised by Taiwanese parents in "a very traditional Chinese family."

The friend, who asked to be identified by her last name, Hsu, said the young couple met four years ago at Stony Brook, where Wang, also a business management major, graduated May 17. Hsu said the couple had a "normal relationship" that had the approval of both sets of parents.

Hwang, who helped pay for school working as a clerk at the college's psychology department, was the son of a waiter. His death devastated his parents, who were visited by streams of relatives and friends bearing flowers.