Woman Visits Boy Murder Suspect, 12Woman Visits Boy Murder Suspect, 12
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A woman who visited a 12-year-old boy charged with murder in the death of his half brother said she feels a connection to the boy, which is why she talked to him while he's being held in the Duval Regional Juvenile Detention Center.
Alicia Torres said Cristian Fernandez and her 12-year-old attended the same school until Fernandez was arrested in March.
While she said the two didn't know one another, she's now giving a glimpse of what the boy is like when he's not in court.
"He told me he's scared of the dark and it was hard for him to be in there 23 hours a day," Torres said of when Fernandez was locked in solitary confinement in the adult jail for a brief time after his arrest. "He couldn't go climb in his mom's bed or get comfort from an adult like a normal kid that's scared of the dark would. My kids still do it."
Torres said that before she even made the trip to the Duval County Jail, she already disagreed with charging any 12-year-old with murder.
When she and her 9-year-old left, she said, she was even more convinced.
"I look at it as politics, someone trying to make a name for themselves, unfortunately through a 12-year-old, and I think it's wrong in every way, shape and form, and I don't agree with it," Torres said. "He told me when he's in there and he's alone, he just starts thinking about all the bad things that happened to him from his stepfather growing up."
Fernandez's attorney has said that the boy's stepfather was physically and emotionally abusive, hitting him so hard in the eye when he was a child that he required surgery.
It's those details that Torres, who is not an attorney, says suggest to her the 12-year-old should be in rehab, not facing a murder charge.
Torres recalled a time when she was on a field trip at Kernan Middle School with Fernandez's class.
"No, I don't remember chaperoning Cristian from that field trip," Torres said. "You want to know why I don't remember? Because he didn't stick out like a sore thumb, and what I mean by that, he wasn't there causing fights. He wasn't there making trouble."
The state attorney's office said when Fernandez was arrested that it decided to charge him with first-degree murder for a couple of reasons. They said he slammed his 2-year-old half brother's head into a book shelf several times, not just once and never tried to help him other than to call his mother to come home.
Prosecutors also said that months before that fatal attack, Fernandez had broken the toddler's leg.
State Attorney Angela Corey also said there is evidence that Fernandez sexually molested his other brother, who's just 5 years old.
