Earlier this year, Oregon mother Jessica Dutro was convicted of murder after beating her 4-year-old toddler to death because she thought he was gay.

In a shockingly similar case out of California, 800 pages of court records detail how 8-year-old Gabriel Fernandez was allegedly beaten to death by his mother and her boyfriend. They “doused him with pepper spray, forced him to eat his own vomit and locked him in a cabinet with a sock stuffed in his mouth to muffle his screams,” according to court records released to the public on Monday and detailed by the LA Times.

According to The Los Angeles Times:





Gabriel’s mother, Pearl Fernandez, called 911 on May 22, 2013, to report that her son was not breathing. She told sheriff’s deputies who arrived at the apartment that Gabriel had fallen and hit his head on a dresser, according to testimony. When paramedics arrived, they found Gabriel naked in a bedroom, not breathing, with a cracked skull, three broken ribs and BB pellets embedded in his lung and groin. He died two days later. Gabriel’s mother, Pearl Fernandez, called 911 on May 22, 2013, to report that her son was not breathing. She told sheriff’s deputies who arrived at the apartment that Gabriel had fallen and hit his head on a dresser, according to testimony. When paramedics arrived, they found Gabriel naked in a bedroom, not breathing, with a cracked skull, three broken ribs and BB pellets embedded in his lung and groin. He died two days later. “It was just like every inch of this child had been abused,” testified James Cermak, a Los Angeles County Fire Department paramedic… Fernandez and [boyfriend Isauro] Aguirre deliberately tortured the boy to death, hiding their tracks with forged doctor’s notes and lies to authorities, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jonathan Hatami told the grand jury. “For eight straight months, he was abused, beaten and tortured more severely than many prisoners of war,” Hatami said.



The Los Angeles Times adds:



The abuse worsened in the months leading up to Gabriel’s death, according to testimony from two of his siblings, both of whom are minors. They said Gabriel was forced to eat cat feces, rotten spinach and his own vomit. He slept in a locked cabinet and wasn’t let out to go to the bathroom. Fernandez and Aguirre called Gabriel gay, punished him when he played with dolls and forced him to wear girls’ clothes to school, the siblings said. Fernandez and Aguirre hit Gabriel with a belt buckle, a metal hanger, a small bat and a wooden club, Gabriel’s brother said. Their mother once jabbed Gabriel in the mouth with a bat and knocked out several teeth, according to testimony… Investigators searching the family’s apartment after Gabriel’s death found bloodstains, BB gun holes and a wooden club covered in his blood, according to testimony. On the day of the fatal beating, Fernandez began hitting Gabriel because he didn’t want to pick up his toys, his older brother testified. She dragged him into a bedroom, where Aguirre joined her, and the siblings heard screaming and banging, he said. “And that’s when it all stopped,” said the brother, 13. “It just went quiet.” Gabriel died as a result of blunt-force trauma and child neglect, James Kemp Ribe of the L.A. County coroner’s office told the grand jury. “I have never seen this many skin injuries on one child,” he said.

Pearl Fernandez, 30, and Isauro Aguirre, 34, are currently awaiting trial, facing charges of capital murder and a special circumstance of torture.

Gabriel’s case sadly slipped through the cracks on multiple occasions as detailed by CBS Los Angeles below:



[H/T: Bilerico