Police in California have arrested an 18-year-old man in connection with a homicide in January that saw another man mutilated inside his car. Fresno County Sheriff’s Office announced on April 5 that they had arrested the man for the murder of 25-year-old Fraylee Hernandez, of Mendota.
Police have not yet released the identity of the suspect due to his age and his being in the juvenile court system. However, they confirmed that the man was an illegal immigrant from El Salvador.
Deputies responded to a call on Jan. 17 about a car parked in an orchard near Mendota, some 35 miles west of Fresno. Inside the car, officers discovered the dismembered body of a man, who was later identified as Mr. Hernandez.
Detectives then identified the primary suspect in the killing, having later learned that the actual killing took place nearly 2 weeks earlier, on Jan. 6.
Police also established that the man and the victim were acquainted. The suspect was 17 years old at the time of the murder, and turned 18 in February. He is also on probation for assaulting his mother, on top of being in the United States illegally.
According to the deputies, the suspect was arrested and has been booked into the Fresno County Juvenile Justice Campus on suspicion of homicide.
“We see a lot of different methods of homicide in our line of work. To shoot somebody is bad enough, but there’s some sort of separation there. When you’re that intimate with somebody that you would mutilate them, that’s a whole different level,” said Tony Botti, the public information officer for the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office.
“They‘ll beat up their own mom and then they’ll chop up another man, it seems, in the blink of an eye,” Mr Botti continued. “It’s very disturbing. And this is somebody we need to keep off our streets and locked up for the rest of his life.”
