Murder of Gabriel Fernandez
2013 murder of an abused eight-year-old American boy
Gabriel Daniel Fernandez (February 20, 2005 – May 24, 2013) was an eight-year-old boy from Palmdale, California, United States, who died after months of severe abuse and torture. His death resulted from a beating inflicted by his mother, Pearl Fernandez, and her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre. Both were charged and convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances of torture. Pearl was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and Aguirre was sentenced to death. Four social workers involved in the case were charged with child neglect and falsifying public records, but these charges were later dropped.
Victim
Gabriel Daniel Fernandez was born on February 20, 2005, to Arnold Contreras and Pearl Fernandez. Shortly after his birth, Fernandez was placed in the care of his great-uncle, Michael Lemos Carranza, and Carranza's partner, David Martinez. In 2009, when Fernandez was four years old, he went to live with his grandparents after his grandfather voiced disapproval of him being raised by a same-sex couple. Fernandez remained with his grandparents until September 2012, when his mother and her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, took him into their custody. Other family members expressed concern at this due to Pearl's alleged neglect of her other children.
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This entry incorporates text from “Murder of Gabriel Fernandez” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.