Gabriel Fernandez spent the last eight months of his life literally being tortured to death. His mother’s boyfriend, convinced the third grader was gay, made his life a living hell.
Dr. Alyssa Rake, the emergency room physician who pronounced Gabriel brain dead after his mother and her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, finally called for an ambulance, told courtroom jurors last year “she found a depressed skull fracture, bruising on his eyes and some missing upper teeth,” ABC 7 reported.
“She saw different stages and ages of bruising and scars, small circular cuts and that he had a deep lash on the base of his penis and a burn mark.”
She also “found Gabriel had a broken skull, a hematoma on his head, swelling on the brain, a deviation of his nose, removed teeth, neck swelling, a cut to his liver and a hematoma on it, and that he had lung disease.”
“Rake said Gabriel also had multiple old and new rib fractures, a BB in his lung and a swollen knee.”
Before he died, Aguirre, who is 6’2″ and 270-pounds, forced Gabriel to go to school in pink leggings and a pink shirt, and made him eat cat feces, and his own vomit. He had also been starved, locked in a small cabinet with a sock stuffed in his mouth to muffle his screams, and doused with pepper spray.
A sheriff’s deputy told jurors that in the apartment where Gabriel lived with his mother, Pearl Fernandez, his brother, and Aguirre, a long list of torture devices was found. Among them, a bat, a club, two pairs of handcuffs, metal BBs in a plastic container and 10 BB-type guns.
“Those metal BBs were found embedded in Gabriel’s body – nine of them in his neck, face, lung, legs, buttocks, foot, chest and groin area,” ABC 7 reported.
When paramedics came to the family home on May 22, 2013, Gabriel was “naked in a bedroom, not breathing, with a cracked skull, three broken ribs and BB pellets embedded in his lung and groin, CBS News reports. He died two days later.
The district attorney told jurors Gabriel “was abused, beaten and tortured more severely than many prisoners of war.”
Isauro Aguirre, 37, and Pearl Sinthia Fernandez, 34, were sentenced Thursday in California Superior Court. Aguirre was given the death penalty. Fernandez was given a sentence of life in prison.
“It goes without saying the conduct was horrendous, inhumane and nothing short of evil,” Superior Court Judge George G. Lomeli said. “It is unimaginable the pain this child probably endured.
“You want to say the conduct was animalistic, but that would be wrong,” he continued. “Because even animals know how to take care of their young, some to an extent that they sacrifice their own lives in caring for their young.”
Gabriel’s first grade teacher, Jennifer Garcia, according to PEOPLE magazine, said after his death that “she found a note he had written in the desk at school. It read, according to reports: ‘I love you, Mom. Gabriel is a good boy.'”