Mother Says Fresno Investigators Failed Son After 13-Year-Old Takes Plea Deal in Fatal Shooting

Emma Infante stood outside the Fresno County Juvenile Justice Center on Friday and said what she’s been saying since June: that investigators didn’t look hard enough at what happened the night her 19-year-old son, Edgar Hernandez, was shot and killed.

Inside, the 13-year-old who pulled the trigger was being sentenced to a year in a juvenile rehabilitation program after taking a plea deal for involuntary manslaughter. Outside, Infante was asking why no one else who was in that apartment has been arrested.

“There were more adults,” the 34-year-old mother said. “They got rid of the firearm. They left my son there to pretty much die on his own, and they’re still not being looked at.”

Hernandez was shot around 8 p.m. on June 23 inside an apartment near Barstow and Brawley avenues. Officers couldn’t find him at first — it took a second 911 call about 20 minutes later to get them to the right location. Infante said it was nearly an hour before her son was taken to a hospital. He died about four hours after the shooting.

The next day, police announced they’d arrested a 13-year-old for the shooting, calling it manslaughter, not homicide. On Friday, Judge Amythest Freeman finalized the teen’s plea deal: 365 days in the New Horizons Program at the juvenile justice center.

Infante believes the investigation wrapped too quickly — less than three months from the shooting to the plea deal, with no one else charged. “Hours later, the kid showed up saying that he was the shooter,” she said. “How do you know that he was actually the one who did it, and he didn’t do it for someone, or he wasn’t influenced by someone?”

Lt. Larry Bowlan, a Fresno Police Department spokesperson, said in a statement that the homicide unit “spent hundreds of hours investigating this crime,” interviewed dozens of people, and served multiple search warrants. “If further information about the incident becomes available in the future, those details will also be provided to the appropriate prosecuting agency,” he said.

Judge Freeman noted during the hearing that the arrest of the 13-year-old doesn’t mean police aren’t still investigating other potential suspects.

Taylor Long, spokesperson for the Fresno County District Attorney’s office, said prosecutors made their charging decision based on the evidence Fresno police provided. “That charging decision reflected the evidence available to our office, which did not establish the intent required for a murder charge,” she said. “We are ethically obligated to make charging decisions based on the evidence and the law.”

State law provides more privacy protections to young offenders than to adults, which makes discussing the facts in a juvenile case difficult for prosecutors, Long noted. The 13-year-old admitted to firing the gun and said it was an accident, according to attorneys at the hearing.

Infante was joined at the center Friday by supporters, including several people whose family members were killed by young offenders. They’re part of a network working to overturn Proposition 57, a ballot measure adopted by voters in 2016. Many in the group say the law prevents them from getting justice because sentences for young offenders are significantly shorter than for adults.

Before the shooting, Hernandez had been a student at Sunnyside High and was enrolled in an automotive technology program at Fresno City College. He’d told his mother he wanted to study business so he could open his own car shop one day.

Infante smiled as she remembered him — never disrespectful, always there for his friends, couldn’t pass a stray animal without stopping to help. “This is the type of stuff that you would hear about Edgar, and it breaks my heart because I’m, like, he was so nice,” she said. “He didn’t deserve this. He was so nice.”

The Breakdown

• A 13-year-old was sentenced to 365 days in a juvenile rehabilitation program after pleading to involuntary manslaughter in the June 23 shooting death of Edgar Hernandez, 19.
• Hernandez’s mother says other adults were in the apartment, got rid of the gun, and left her son to die — and that investigators stopped looking once the 13-year-old turned himself in hours after the shooting.
• The Fresno County District Attorney’s office says the evidence didn’t support a murder charge, which requires proving intent. State law makes it harder to discuss the details of juvenile cases publicly.
• Fresno police say they spent hundreds of hours on the case, interviewed dozens of people, and served multiple search warrants — and that further investigation is possible if new information comes to light.

What This Means for You

The District Attorney you elect decides what charges to file and what plea deals to accept — and in this case, that office decided the evidence supported an involuntary manslaughter charge against a 13-year-old, not a murder charge, and not charges against anyone else. When you vote for DA, you’re voting for the person who makes those calls in every case. You’re also living with the results of Proposition 57, which voters statewide passed in 2016. If you think this outcome is wrong — or right — those are the votes that created it.

What to Watch

This case raises a real question about what “thorough investigation” means when a young suspect admits guilt early. Infante is asking a legitimate question: did investigators stop looking once they had a confession from the 13-year-old, or did they actually follow every lead about the other adults she says were in that apartment? Police say they spent hundreds of hours and interviewed dozens of people — but no one else has been charged, and the case closed in under three months. Either the evidence genuinely isn’t there, or the investigation didn’t push far enough. A reader can’t know which from the outside, but a pattern worth watching is whether cases involving young offenders close faster than they should because a juvenile plea deal is easier to secure than an adult prosecution.