Seriously for 8 months and finally killed. This is the crime story that took place in Palmdale, California in 2013: An 8-year-old boy came to the emergency room after CPR with unspeakable marks on his body torture and pain.
That’s how he left Gabriel Fernandez, by the hand, as the American judiciary later determined, his mother Pearl Fernandez and her partner Isauro Aguirre. The story is the focus of the Netflix mini-series entitled Aguzzini at home: the story of little Gabriel Fernandez.
Gabriel’s last hours
It is the evening of May 22, 2013 (California local time). A woman calls 911 and says, “My child is not breathing.” IS Pearl Fernandez. Shortly afterwards his partner Isauro Aguirre Talk to firefighters who will advise him on how to perform cardiac massage and external breathing. The man adds: “Oh my god! My son is 8 years old. He was arguing with his brother and I found him unconscious. But that didn’t happen: the son in question, Gabriel, was beaten, and the mother and partner initially tried to cover up what had happened. Her crime has provoked outrage and horror in every political branch of the United States.
“As I was filling out the chart — says ambulance nurse Christen Estes in the documentary as he told Gabriel about his arrival at the ER — what the doctors said shocked me. I couldn’t believe this list was real.” In fact, the child was found to have burns on the neck, abrasions and cuts on the face, black eyes, cuts everywhere including one on the penis, abrasions from pulling on the feet, signs of ropes around the ankles. In addition, two were in the child’s body balls, one in a lung and one in the groin. It was riddled with cigarette burns, some almost healed, some new, and he had one depressed fracture of the skull.
“It was like touching puffed rice,” Estes added, speaking of the texture of the baby’s head. That at 14.52 del May 23, 2013 (now in California) was pronounced dead despite the massive and coordinated efforts of doctors and health professionals.
Those unheard complaints
Gabriel was born on February 20, 2005, but his mother Pearl left him in the hospital. Three days after the great uncle Michael Lemos Carranza He puts him in foster homes and begins raising him with his partner David Martinez. The child is happy with the two men, but someone accuses him that he may have been abused, although the allegations have never been proven. So Gabriel is entrusted to his grandparents, who were not well disposed towards her homosexual relationship of the great uncle. But Gabriel also lives a happy life with his grandparents until the social workers decide that he can return to Pearl. Gabriel confides in his relatives that he is afraid of his mother’s partner and the woman’s family tries to oppose the choice of social workers. Vain.
That abuse they begin with the first days of Gabriel’s new life with his mother, her partner, and the child’s two older brothers. Gabriel is subjected to various forms of torture: his mother shoots him with an air pistol, he is forced to do so frozen bathstied to sleep, gagged and blindfolded in lower case cabinet at the foot of the mother’s bed. His teeth are blasted out with a sledgehammer. It is not fed except with cat litter. The brothers’ love becomes estranged from him as the two adults urge the children to push him away and mistreat him.
But someone notices that something is wrong. A teacher notices this and passes numerous on reports to social services, a vigilante who works in social services, recognizes this. But their complaints go unheeded. Among other things, Pearl manages to convince the police that the child invented everything to escape bigger thugs. While some news stories tell tales of children mistakenly taken from their birth parents, this one tells of a series of alleged recklessness and lapses in vigilance.
The processes
Pearl Fenández and Isauro Aguirre
Several lawsuits were filed against Pearl and Isauro in the court case as well as against social services. To deal with the latter and avoid similar events in the future, the supervisory board will be alerted, coming in case there are new rules to follow family violence towards children.
Two social workers, Stefanie Rodriguez and Patricia Clement, and two supervisors, Kevin Bom and Gregory Merritt, were charged wrong in the public deed and child abuse: They faced 11 years in prison but were eventually acquitted for lack of evidence. Nine police officers involved were attacked disciplinary sanctions because I didn’t believe the child.
Pearl and Isauro’s position is different. Pearl pleaded guilty and received the sentencelifelong prison sentence without the possibility of parole. Isauro was convicted death penalty. What was distressing for her was that investigators perceived that neither of them cared for Gabriel: they did not see them administer CPR when the ambulance arrived, and they did not get into the vehicle that took the child to the hospital. Furthermore, an allegedly even more chilling detail weighed on their minds: the violence and torture against Gabriel might have been tied to their menage as if it were one sexual foreplay.
Unfortunately, prison sentences and new rules were not necessary: on June 21, 2018 the little one is born Anton Avalos, 10, was tortured and killed by her mother and partner with exactly the same dynamics, albeit with different motives. No one was able to prevent this crime and even save the life of this second child.