“Your brother didn’t come, did he? If he doesn’t show up by eleven, we’ll call the police.” Lorena nervously hung up the phone. He was talking to his daughter Carolina. They were looking for the eldest of their children, they had three children. I crossed the street looking for David in Laguna de Duero (Valladolid). After singing happy birthday to his sister the previous night, the young man left the house nervously and dressed: “I have to go out mom”. Hours passed and they heard nothing from him.
Lorena kept her hopes up: she’ll be here soon. Five minutes after they hung up on her daughter, they heard from her. “My daughter sent me a photo that started circulating on WhatsApp and got into her via a group: they had found a boy lying in the lake area. His jacket, sweatpants, and face… He was lying on the floor: it was my son David.”
David Hernandez, 18 years old, He was brutally murdered in Laguna de Duero (Valladolid) at dawn on April 16, 2020. They took their lives in the middle of an epidemic. His body looked full of bumps; one on the head, predictably fatal, and several stab wounds. Two and a half years later, there is no criminal. Anyone Murder weapon. There is no reason for the crime or no witnesses who could contribute further.
The Civil Guard continues to connect the dots in a recap that has been declared confidential. In parallel, Lorena tries to find the answers. “We need to know the truth.” He does it every day. without rest. Talk to OPEN CASE to demand justice. Ask for the silence to be broken. If someone knows something, don’t stay silent: “This is the only way to find out what happened to David.”
“This is David!”
Wednesday, April 15, 2020. Tranquility reigns in Laguna de Duero, where Lorena lives with her three children (Carolina, Alex and David). The coronavirus imposes a strict restriction on going out schedules and restrictions. 18-year-old David can’t stand it anymore. “I was nervous but a little nervous as a child That’s why – he has hyperactivity – the whole epidemic in general made him a little sad …”, her mother recalls.
After 00:00 they sang their sister Carolina’s birthday song. The next day they would celebrate beautifully with a cake. “Suddenly he told me he had to come down. I told him not to come down, get into bed, get over it. And she told me no, no, I had to come down“He took his cell phone, his lighter, his jacket and went out into the street.
“It would be like 1:00 in the morning,” her mother recalls. “Seeing him very nervous, I followed him downstairs. He wasn’t after anything, but he was goneReturning home, the woman said, “I was writing to him, he did not answer. I called, he didn’t take it…” He went down again. “I went out again at half past two in the morning. I looked around. i couldn’t find it either I kept calling, texting… and there came a moment when the cell phone rang.”
“I think he fell for something to defend someone or himself. I think he knew their killer, David,” says the young man’s mother.
Dawn broke and Lorena turned to the street, “I just went to buy a cake.” She was sure that her son would return well. On the way, he took the opportunity to return to areas where he might have been, but there was no sign of David. “Thereupon I called her sister, we gave the eleven o’clock margin. That’s when we got the photo”.
“The sweatpants, the jacket… We’ll never forget that,” Lorena portrays. After seeing the video, they went to the Police. They didn’t know if he was alive or not. An agent asked them to calm down. “He told me not to worry, the boy they found was a minor, a 15-16 year old boy… I said to them: ‘That body does not belong to a minor; He’s 18, he’s my son, and his name is David.” He handed over the lad’s papers. Worst of all, it was confirmed: “he was my son.”
defended himself
His body was found the same morning. His mother called, beat, called. Around 7:30 in the morning, a man walking around the sports center spotted him. “She never knew who she was, so I didn’t talk to her,” says Lorena.
The neighbor thought the young man was unconscious, he would tell later. He called the Civil Guard, who showed up with the medical team. They cordoned off the area. David took multiple hits and only had one shoe. (the other appeared a meter and a half away from him). I did not have a document. Just a lighter and a switched off phone. They tried to revive him, but he had been dead for several hours. He had been killed just a hundred meters from his home.
A robbery, a confrontation, a showdown. The people started talking. “Some things are painful to listen to,” Lorena complains. “He was a boy. David is 18, but come on, he’s a boy. I had a job and moneyI don’t think he had any debt. I don’t think anyone would kill a child for something like that.”
There is no prevailing reason or hypothesis. It was April 16, 2020, that an investigation that did not stop but seemed not to proceed began. “Half the town has been questioned,” residents say. No clues, clues or witnesses. “I know they’re still working on it,” Lorena said in a broken voice, but I don’t know more.
No weapons, no witnesses
David woke up full of bumps. “He had two stab wounds on his side, apart from his head, which I thought was the one who killed him.” Lorena takes a deep breath to continue. “I didn’t have to see the body. I can’t tell you how, but they told me he had bruises and defensive wounds, my son defended himself.”
Civil Guards searched the park for stones, bottles, sticks or anything that could be used as a deadly weapon. Months later, divers from the Special Underwater Activities Group (GEAS) Civil Guards would search the nearby lagoon in case it was launched there. They couldn’t find anything.
“Every day that passes without knowing it is worse. You are resurrected, there is no answer. There is no reason…” her mother complains. “December is coming, a particularly difficult month…“Lorena suffers looking at Christmas, which hasn’t been like this for two years.” The case is still open, they’re still investigating, said the Government Delegate, but it’s difficult, because in the end, the more time passes, the more complicated it gets. They continue with the lines of investigation they had from the beginning. Which ones? I do not know.”
wrong time and place
“At first I thought my son was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but Now I think he went down the street for something. Don’t tell me why or for what“. A few seconds later, Lorena continues: “…if it’s to defend someone, or to defend yourself. I’m turning more and more. Sometimes I think it’s the same thing. So they started arguing or something and it got out of hand. That the killers knew David”.
Try to find the piece that answers: “I can’t complete this puzzle. I can’t put the pieces together. It doesn’t get into my head because everyone I talk to says the same thing: David was not confrontational, David was a kind boy, David… well, no, no, I don’t understand“.
“You are my star mom”
Smiling, funny, loving, hardworking. Everyone in Laguna remembers him. “We had a bar,” his mother says, “and people always say he’s the kid with a smile to everyone.” He listened, served and smiled.
Lorena clings to her smile, her photos, her letters. “He recently wrote me one, my They were their little star in the sky as he always taught them values.a respect and being who they are now.” It contains the pain and goes on: “she is my star now”.
He likes rap, joker, “he liked to play football, not watch”; I spent long hours at the gymnasium park. Lorena looks at the sky, at the star, at David and asks for power: “I just want justice. I want to know who killed him and why.”