A Dallas County jury found Nestor Hernandez guilty of capital murder on Thursday afternoon.
Hernandez killed two Dallas Methodist Medical Center employees, social worker Jacqueline Pokuaa and nurse Annette Flowers while visiting his girlfriend in the hospital's labor and delivery unit.
Dallas Chief of Police Eddie Garcia said during a briefing with reporters last year that during Hernandez's visit with his girlfriend, he pulled a gun from his pants and struck her multiple times in the head. After the assault, Garcia said Pokuaa came into the room to provide routine services to the patient and that as she was working on the woman Hernandez got up, walked over to her, and shot her once. Garcia said Methodist Health Sgt. Robert Rangel was a few doors down investigating a stolen property call when he heard the gunshot. Another hospital employee, Katie Flowers, also heard the gunfire. Flowers, Garcia said, looked into the room and was shot by Hernandez as she stood in the hallway. Investigators said Hernandez reloaded his gun and started to leave his girlfriend's room but was confronted by Rangel and was shot in the leg.
Hernandez pleaded not guilty to his charges. While on the stand Wednesday, Hernandez admitted he and his girlfriend were fighting but said he didn't intend to shoot Pokuaa and that when she got between them the gun went off, fatally wounding her. He said he then panicked and fired blindly twice into the hallway, trying to keep anyone else from entering the room. He said he never saw Flowers and that after shooting into the hallway he tried to convince his girlfriend to give him the baby and move them away from the doorway, convinced someone would soon be coming into the room to kill him.
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Closing arguments began late Thursday morning and ended at 12:40 p.m. The jury is expected to receive the case Thursday afternoon and, if convicted of capital murder, Hernandez would automatically be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Defense attorney Paul Johnson thanked the jury for their service, acknowledging it might take "weeks or months" to work through the evidence they saw and heard during the three-day trial. In his opening statement, Johnson asked the jury to find Hernandez guilty of one of the lesser charges, including murder, negligent homicide, or manslaughter.
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During closing, Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot spoke first for the state, telling the jury of eight men and four women the evidence has proven beyond a reasonable doubt Hernandez was full of “rage, resentment, anger and a plan to kill.”
Hernandez, Creuzot said, brought extra bullets to carry out the assault after attacking Selena Villatoro, the mother of his newborn baby, accusing of her cheating on him, but did not expect to encounter police so quickly.
“What he took in there was death,” said Creuzot.
Jurors were asked to come to a capital murder conviction if they believed beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant’s reckless conduct led to the murder of more than one person during the same transaction.
Hernandez admitted during his testimony Wednesday to coming off a meth high when he strolled into Methodist Dallas to see his son but said he was not armed. He told jurors he had handed his pistol to Villatoro the day before the rampage as they drove to the hospital for her to give birth, in exchange for her giving the baby his last name.
He said he put the gun in Villatoro’s makeup bag that went with her to the hospital and that on the day of the shooting, he asked her for the gun because he said he found someone to buy it.
Hernandez went on to say he opened the room’s door and began to shoot because he ‘panicked’ and did not want anyone to come in but claims he did not know he shot nurse Flowers, which lead prosecutor George Lewis called ‘ridiculous.’
Johnson told jurors it is Villatoro, Hernandez’ ex and a convicted felon, is to blame for part of the tragedy and accused her of not telling the whole truth on the stand.
