A homeless man was sentenced on Monday, January 22, 2018, for the second-degree murder of his girlfriend, whose body was discovered in a West Hollywood trash bin. Photo from Pixabay.
The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to review the case of a man convicted of the beating death of his girlfriend’s 13- month-old son, who lingered in a hospital for nearly three weeks before dying.
Rodrigo Hernandez, now 26, was convicted in March 2016 of one count each of second-degree murder and assault on a child causing death.
Prosecutors said Hernandez was watching Smith Fernando Garcia Jr. — family members called the tot “Handsome” — on June 7, 2015, while his mother was in another room in their Compton apartment.
Her relatives told the woman at some point that her son was behaving strangely. When she went to check on him, the toddler began to have seizures and bruises began to develop on his body, according to prosecutors.
Paramedics were called and the boy was hospitalized. A coroner’s official testified that the child died 19 days later from blunt force trauma to his abdomen.
Hernandez was sentenced in May 2016 to 25 years to life in state prison.
–City News Service
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