The body of the 18-year-old boy had blows and several stab wounds. His mother, Lorena, found out about his death from a photo that was circulating on WhatsApp and went to the Civil Guard: “he is my son”
“Your brother hasn’t arrived, has he? If he doesn’t show up by eleven, we’ll call the police.” Lorena hung up nervously. She was talking to her daughter Carolina about her. They were looking for the eldest of her children, she had three. I beat the street, in Laguna de Duero (Valladolid) looking for David. The night before, after singing happy birthday to his sister, the young man left the house, nervous and wearing what he was wearing: “I have to go out, mom”. Hours passed and they heard nothing from him.
Lorena kept hope: she will be here soon. Five minutes after she hung up the phone on her daughter, they heard from him. “My daughter sent me a photo that began to circulate on WhatsApp and that had entered her through a group: they had found a child lying in the lake area. His jacket, his tracksuit and his face… He was lying on the ground: it was my son David.”
David Hernandez, 18 years old, was brutally murdered in Laguna de Duero (Valladolid) at dawn on April 16, 2020. They took his life in the middle of a pandemic. His body appeared full of blows; one in the head, predictably fatal, and several stab wounds. Two and a half years later, there are no guilty parties. Either murder weapon. There is no motive for the crime, nor witnesses who can contribute more.
The Civil Guard continues to connect the dots in a summary declared secret. Lorena, in parallel, tries to find answers. “We need to know the truth.” She does it every day. Without a rest. She speaks with OPEN CASE to claim justice. Ask that the silence be broken. If someone knows something, don’t be silent: “it’s the only option to find out what happened to David.”
“It’s David!”
Wednesday, April 15, 2020. In Laguna de Duero, where Lorena lives with her three children (Carolina, Alex and David), calm prevails. The coronavirus imposes a strict confinement, with schedules and restrictions to go outside. David, 18 years old, can’t take it anymore. “I was agitated but, being a little nervous child As such -he has hyperactivity- in general the whole pandemic had him a bit upset…”, recalls his mother.
After 00:00 hours they sang the birthday of their sister, Carolina. The next day, with a cake, they would celebrate well. “Suddenly, he tells me that she had to come down. I told him not to come down, to get into bed, that he would get over it. And he told me no, no, that he had to go down“With what he was wearing – he put his clothes on over his pajamas – he took the mobile phone, a lighter, the jacket and went out into the street.
“It would be 01:00 in the morning or so,” recalls his mother. “Since I saw him so nervous, I went down after him. It was after nothing, but it was gone“. The woman returned home, “I was writing to her, she didn’t answer me. She called him, she didn’t take it… “She went back downstairs. “I went out again at two thirty in the morning. I looked around. I didn’t find it either. I kept calling, sending messages… and there came a time when his cell phone went off.”
“I think he went down for something, to defend someone or to defend himself. I think his murderers knew David,” says the young man’s mother.
Dawn came and Lorena returned to the street, “I went in a moment to buy the cake.” She was confident that her son would return well. She took the opportunity, on the way, to return to the areas where she could be, but there was no trace of David. “So, I called her sister, we gave the eleven o’clock margin. That was when we received the photo”.
“His tracksuit, his jacket… We will never forget it”, revives Lorena. After seeing the image, they went to the Civil Guard. They didn’t know if he was alive. An agent asked them to calm down. “He told me not to worry, that the boy they had found was a minor, that he was a 15- or 16-year-old boy… I told them: ‘That body does not belong to a minor; He is 18 years old, he is my son and his name is David “. He handed over the documentation of the young man. The worst was confirmed:” he was my son “.
defended himself
His body was found that same morning. While her mother called, beat, searched. Around 7:30 a.m., a man who was walking around the sports center saw him. “He has never known who he is nor have I spoken to him,” says Lorena.
The neighbor thought the young man was unconscious, he would tell later. He called the Civil Guard, who appeared together with a medical team. They cordoned off the area. David had multiple blows and only one shoe on (the other appeared a meter and a half away from him). He had no documentation. Just a lighter and a switched off phone. They tried to revive him, but he had been lifeless for several hours. He had been murdered just a hundred meters from home.
A robbery, a confrontation, a reckoning. The people began to speak. “Listening to some things has been painful,” laments Lorena. “He was a kid. David is 18, but come on, he’s a kid. I had work and moneyI don’t think he had debts. I don’t think anyone would kill a kid over something like that.”
There is no motive or hypothesis that prevails. That April 16, 2020, an investigation began that does not stop, but it seems not to advance. “Half the town has been questioned,” the residents say. There are no clues, clues or witnesses. “I know they’re still working on it,” Lorena says brokenly, “but I don’t know more.”
No gun, no witnesses
David woke up full of blows. “Apart from the one in the head, which I think is the one who killed him, he had two stab wounds in the side.” Lorena takes a breath to continue. “I have not had to see the body. I can’t say how he was or anything, but they did tell me that he had bruises and defense wounds, my son defended himself.”
The Civil Guard searched the park for a stone, a bottle, a bar or any element that could have been used as a lethal weapon. Months later, divers from the unit of the Special Underwater Activities Group (GEAS) of the Civil Guard, they would search the nearby lagoon, in case it could have been thrown there. They found nothing.
“Every day without knowing is worse. You revive, there are no answers. There is no why…”, laments his mother. “December is coming, a particularly difficult month…“, Lorena hurts, looking at Christmas that has not been such for two years. “The case is still open, they are still investigating, the Government Delegate told me, but it is difficult, because in the end, the more time passes, the more complicated it is. They continue with the lines of investigation they had from the beginning. Which are? I don’t know.”
wrong time and place
“At first I thought that maybe my son was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but Now I think he went down to the street for something. Don’t tell me why or for what“. After a few seconds, Lorena continues: “…if to defend someone, or to defend himself. I turn around more and more. Sometimes, I think that the same thing has happened. That is to say, they have started to argue, or whatever, and it has gotten out of hand. That the murderers knew David”.
Try to find the piece that yields the answer: “I can’t get to complete that puzzle. I can’t fit the pieces together. It doesn’t enter my head because everyone I talk to says the same thing: David was not confrontational, David was a polite boy, David… So, no, no, I don’t get it“.
“You are my star, mom”
Smiling, joking, loving, hardworking. Everyone in Laguna remembers him. “We had a bar,” says his mother, “and people always say that he was a child who always had a smile for everyone.” He listened, served and smiled.
Lorena clings to her smile, her photos, her letters. “She wrote me one shortly before, she said that I He was their little star in the sky because he had always taught them valuesa respect, and to be who they were now”. He contains the pain and continues: “now he is my star”.
Rap lover, joker, “he liked football, not to watch it, but to play”; she spent long hours in the calisthenics park. Lorena looks at the sky, at the star, at David, and asks for strength: “I just want justice. To know who and why they killed him.”