Ernie Hernandez Jr. died of multiple stab wounds; Police say they see no motive in ‘a very brutal, a very violent’ attack

From KTXL-TV, Sacramento, the Modesto [CA] Bee, KTXL-TV, Sacramento, KCRA-TV, Sacramento:

Police in Modesto, California, are investigating the death of  37-year-old Ernie Hernandez Jr., who was stabbed multiple times in the head and neck Saturday as he walked between a local shopping mall and  his group home. Family members say Hernandez, who had an intellectual disability, had been fearful and often talked about being teased, ridiculed, and called “retard” at the mall.

A police spokesman said Hernandez didn’t have any gang affiliation or criminal history, and said they had not identified a motive Hernandez’ slaying.  “What we can determine from the scene and from the victim; it was a very brutal, a very violent attack,” said Sgt. Rick Armendariz.

Hernandez had worked on cleaning, maintenance and landscaping tasks with the City of Ceres and California Department of Transportation for about 10 years, with the help of services provided by the Howard Training Center in Ceres. Betty Arwood, the center’s vocational director, said the program’s clients are regularly subjected to taunts and teasing from teenagers and young adults while out in public.

“We’ve had our people teased and taunted,” Arwood said. “Our population carries a stigma.”

Co-workers remembered Hernandez as a good worker who was friendly and went out of his way to help others.

By Clark Kauffman in the Des Moines Register, Associated Press:

An administrative law judge has ruled that a Texas company accused of abusing and underpaying workers with intellectual disabilities need only pay  a fine of $174,660, or 15 percent of the fine proposed by an Iowa state agency. Either side can appeal the ruling.

Judge Jeffrey Farrell concluded that the company had been acting in good faith, and had complied with the law for the first 40 years it did business. The company, Henry’s Turkey Service, has been accused of housing its workers in unsafe conditions in a delapidated bunkhouse, and paying them only about $65 per month regardless of the hours they worked.

Iowa Workforce Development, the agency that enforces state labor laws, had proposed a fine of $1,164,000.

Earlier posts here.

See also:

4 Atalissa men’s welfare doubted — by Clark Kauffman in the Des Moines Register.

Four of the mentally retarded men who worked for Henry’s Turkey Service in eastern Iowa are now the focus of an escalating battle involving mental health advocates, the Texas attorney general and the family that founded Henry’s.

“These men are still being held hostage by the family that ran the Atalissa bunkhouse,” said Sylvia Piper of Iowa Protection and Advocacy.

Institutions endure in Virginia, amid controversy

Virginians with disabilities are caught in a system with too many antiquated institutions and too little money for community care, Henri E. Cauvin writes in the Washington Post. The state is one of just 11 that have not closed any institutions.

Former Gov. Timothy M. Kaine stirred public controversy last year when he announced a plan to close  the Southeastern Virginia Training Center, a  97-acre facility in Chesapeake with 133 residents and 400 employees. Following vocal complaints and active lobbying by families to keep the place open, the state has instead commenced a $23.7 million rebuilding project. The decision is an indication that the state’s path to deinstitutionalization will continue to be slow, Cauvin writes.

Supporters of Southeastern say community care should not be the only option available for families. Advocates like The Arc of Virginia argue that the state could serve more people if it shifted its limited resources away from its five large institutions and toward community-based services that would allow people to live in their own homes.

“We should close them all,” said Charles Hall, a local mental health official in the Hampton Roads area. “But Virginia is very predictably conservative when it comes to things like this.”

A records review by the Houston Chronicle and Texas Tribune has disclosed that workers at a center for distressed children provoked seven girls with developmental disabilities to fight as staffers laughed and cheered.

The 2008 incident, one of more than 250 recent cases of abuse and mistreatment in state residential treatment centers that were uncovered by reporters, caused bites and bruises but drew no public outcry or criminal indictments.

Reporters reviewed cases that had been documented by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services but not previously disclosed. Among the records, they found documentation that residential treatment center workers had choked and punched residents, that residents were forced to strip down to their underwear, and that staff members and a staffer’s relative had engaged in sexual acts with residents. The centers are paid by the state to provide care. All of them remain in operation today.

“Why I’m outraged is, the department hid this from us,” said state Rep. Patrick Rose, D-Dripping Springs. “This is another example of us having to find out about systemic failures through the press, as opposed to proactively from the department.”

Not long after the incident at Daystar Residential Inc. in Manvel, Texas police stumbled on to cell phone videos of workers at a Corpus Christi institution forcing fights between male residents with intellectual disabilities. That case prompted public outrage, criminal convictions for six workers, and enhanced security measures at state institutions.

Earlier posts here.

On a segment of ABC’s “What Would You Do?” that aired Wednesday, customers in a Brooklyn grocery store found themselves trapped in a checkout line behind rude shoppers who berated a bagger with Down syndrome. The customers didn’t know that the clerk and the rude shoppers were all actors. Hidden cameras recorded everyone’s reactions to abusive language that the show described as happening “all too often” in real life.

“You’re absolutely retarded, dude! You have to go faster,” an actress shouted.

While some customers ignored the abuse, others spoke up in defense of the clerk, played by actor Josh Eber. “He’s a person, the same as you and I, with feelings,” said a woman identified as “Karen”, a teacher who has taught children with disabilities. “Everybody deserves an education. Everybody deserves a job, and everybody deserves a chance in this life. And you should be ashamed of yourself.”

Madeleine Will of the National Down Syndrome Society underscored the hurtfulness of insults like the word “retard.” She called on the public to speak up against verbal abuse.

“When we’re silent, our silence condones the language,” she said. “It’s important to say, again and again, this is wrong, this is not fair, this is not how we treat other people.”

From the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, WCVB-TV:

Seven young men and two youths were charged this week with beating and kicking a teenager on a busy street in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. They face up to five years in prison — twice the usual sentence — because the victim has developmental disabilities.

“A crime like this just shocks the conscience,” Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said in a statement. “It’s obscene.’

Ninetten-year-old Jerome Brown, whom police described as “mentally challenged” or “of diminished mental capacity,” said the mob attacked him when he refused to surrender his cellphone. Lawyers for the defendants said their clients were not involved.

From the Des Moines Register, AP/Bloomberg Businessweek:

A federal agency has concluded that a Texas company cheated its workers with disabilities out of at least $1 million, subjected them to abuse and humiliation, and committed numerous major violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The company, Henry’s Turkey Service, had housed at least 65 men in an old bunkhouse in Atalissa, Iowa, and put them to work in a turkey slaughtering plant in where they were paid 41 cents an hour.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said the Texas labor broker acted with malice or reckless indifference in committing numerous major violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, resulting in significant harm to the workers and “substantial economic benefits” to the company.

“What happened to the men employed by Henry’s Turkey Service at West Liberty Foods is nothing short of horrific,” said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia.