May 19, 2007 12:31 am US/Eastern
A Mother's Plea: Kathy Hernandez Speaks
A CBS4 News Special Report
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MIAMI (CBS4) ―
Kathy Hernandez struggles to describe what it's like to have your only son charged as a brutal killer.
"It's like your world has just crashed down around you," she says. "It's like reliving this day after day after day, and there's no end to it."
As the mother of accused teenage killer Hernandez says she wants to scream, sometimes every hour, every moment of the day. As her son's court case enters a new phase, she agreed to break her silence on his case and attempt to explain why she thinks her son went from the boy she loved, to the accused killer she visits in jail.
She wonders how her child could commit the violent crime of which he is accused.
"I wonder that all the time," she told
CBS4 Chief Investigative Reporter Michelle Gillen, in an exclusive interview.
At age 14, in a moment's time, on a windy winter day, the son she describes as affectionate, smart and successful vanished and a boy who she says bears no resemblance to the child she gave birth to walked into a middle school bathroom, and as charged by police, slit the throat of his best friend.
A community struggled with the "Why". His mother struggled with "Where did I go wrong."
"I feel like I really let him down," Hernandez said of her son. "I did not see it."
She said she did not protect her son, "And by not protecting him, I didn't protect Jamie."
Hernandez believes she now knows what happened the day her son, as charged by police, killed classmate Jamie Gough.
"I believe he lost touch with reality," she said. "I think he just stepped right over that line and lost complete touch with reality."
Charged as an adult, Michael Hernandez has been held in jail awaiting trial for more than three years. He is now 17, and if convicted, could spend the rest of his days in prison.
"I hope to live long enough to see him one day again, to see my Michael," she said. When she looks in her son's eyes now, she said, "I see blankness. There's no other way to explain it except mental illness,"
Replaying the months which led up to the killing, Hernandez said her son became seemingly obsessed with working out, and began displaying all sorts of obsessive-compulsive behavior.
"He began with some repetitive behaviors around the house, like opening and closing the door that goes from the garage to the house, and I began to notice it was a certain number of times."
"After he ate, he would turn his silverware upside down," she recalls.
An ardent list maker, his mother didn't know of the lists the state says her son wrote describing plans for violence.
"This is a tragedy for everybody involved. There is never going to be a winner in this, ever. This is something that has changed both families lives, and has changed the community in many ways."
"You know, we don't have a complete family any more," she said. "We have a big hole in our family, and we will never be a complete family again without Michael. Never."
Michael Hernandez confessed to the killing os his friend and classmate, but another round of hearings to determine if Michael Hernandez's confession will be allowed into court is scheduled for June.
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