Assault hatchets kill children, not people. When will we ban assault hatchets?
Fair question.
Man accused of killing 9-year-old son with hatchet had custody despite record of violence - Sacramento City News - The Sacramento Bee
Nine months out of prison, Phillip Hernandez wrote an impassioned plea to Sacramento's family court to let him try fatherhood.
He described being a "fully and utterly changed" man with a desire to "correct past wrongs." He talked about going to work and saving money and buying a home for himself and his boys, whom he hadn't seen in three years.
"Because ultimately, they are what matter, my view of life and what is important in it is family," he wrote to the court in July 2008, asking for visitation rights. "Please hear my plea and help me be there. … I want to give them what I didn't have – a father."
The words hardly sound like those of the man portrayed in earlier criminal court records as abusive of his wife, disobedient of the law and defiant of the court. And most starkly, they stand in contrast to the depiction of Hernandez by Sacramento police as a child killer.
Police allege that Hernandez used a hatchet to brutally attack his youngest son, 9-year-old Matthew Raymond Hernandez, as he slept on the couch of their South Natomas home Tuesday night. The violence was witnessed by the boy's great-grandmother, who made two hysterical 911 calls.
Officers arrived to find the fourth-grader dead and his 12-year-old brother, who was home at the time of the slaying, unharmed. Hernandez, 36, was arrested about a mile away.
He is scheduled to be arraigned today on one charge of murder.
Detectives, relatives and community members have sought answers in the aftermath of the attack, to no avail. Hernandez is being held in the Sacramento County Main Jail's psychiatric ward, but no one has alleged that he is mentally ill.........
Read more here: Man accused of killing 9-year-old son with hatchet had custody despite record of violence - Sacramento City News - The Sacramento Bee
Fair question.
Man accused of killing 9-year-old son with hatchet had custody despite record of violence - Sacramento City News - The Sacramento Bee
Nine months out of prison, Phillip Hernandez wrote an impassioned plea to Sacramento's family court to let him try fatherhood.
He described being a "fully and utterly changed" man with a desire to "correct past wrongs." He talked about going to work and saving money and buying a home for himself and his boys, whom he hadn't seen in three years.
"Because ultimately, they are what matter, my view of life and what is important in it is family," he wrote to the court in July 2008, asking for visitation rights. "Please hear my plea and help me be there. … I want to give them what I didn't have – a father."
The words hardly sound like those of the man portrayed in earlier criminal court records as abusive of his wife, disobedient of the law and defiant of the court. And most starkly, they stand in contrast to the depiction of Hernandez by Sacramento police as a child killer.
Police allege that Hernandez used a hatchet to brutally attack his youngest son, 9-year-old Matthew Raymond Hernandez, as he slept on the couch of their South Natomas home Tuesday night. The violence was witnessed by the boy's great-grandmother, who made two hysterical 911 calls.
Officers arrived to find the fourth-grader dead and his 12-year-old brother, who was home at the time of the slaying, unharmed. Hernandez, 36, was arrested about a mile away.
He is scheduled to be arraigned today on one charge of murder.
Detectives, relatives and community members have sought answers in the aftermath of the attack, to no avail. Hernandez is being held in the Sacramento County Main Jail's psychiatric ward, but no one has alleged that he is mentally ill.........
Read more here: Man accused of killing 9-year-old son with hatchet had custody despite record of violence - Sacramento City News - The Sacramento Bee
