A 27-year-old California man has been convicted in the double murder of his parents, who prosecutors said he fatally shot during an early morning inside their San Francisco home, with his younger sister there.
Irvin Hernandez-Flores was found guilty of two counts of second-degree murder and one count of child abuse more than three years after the 2022 killings, the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office announced in a Monday, January 26, news release.
“No child should have to witness the murder of her parents like the victim did in this tragic case,” Assistant District Attorney John Roman said in a statement.
Information on Hernandez-Flores’ legal representation was not immediately available.
After 2:30 a.m. on August 13, 2022, Hernandez-Flores drove to his father and stepmother’s Bayview home, where “he scaled a locked security fence to the property” and broke into their house before shooting them to death, prosecutors said.
His father, Jose Hernandez, 47, was shot five times, according to prosecutors, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. His stepmother, Yesenia Soto, 41, was then shot six times, prosecutors said.
The deadly shootings unfolded in front of Hernandez-Flores’ younger half-sister, who was 11 at the time, according to the newspaper.
“This horrific crime left a young woman without her parents and rocked a community,” District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in a statement.
Hernandez-Flores’ father immediately died after the shooting, but his stepmother died later at a hospital, according to the district attorney’s office.
They were sleeping when he shot them, KTVU reported.
Following the shooting, Hernandez-Flores started an online livestream, according to the outlet.
Randy Quezada, a spokesperson for the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, previously told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2022 that Hernandez-Flores had livestreamed after the shooting, and in the footage, “appears proud and happy with himself, all while you can clearly see his father laying in a pool of blood, and his step-mother slowly dying from her multiple gunshot wounds.”
From jail, Hernandez-Flores previously spoke with KTVU about the murders, saying that he “drank heavily” before he headed to his parents’ Bayview home. Though he said he went there with a gun, he told the TV station that he did not plan to kill them.
Hernandez-Flores said he shot his father first, after he awoke and reportedly “charged at him,” according to KTVU.
“Once I emptied the clip, I turned on the lights and I see him on the floor,” Hernandez-Flores recalled. “I see his suffering and then I stopped his suffering.”
After shooting his step-mother, Hernandez-Flores recalled that his then 11-year-old sister was “shocked.”
“She needed my help to get in contact with [emergency services],” he told KTVU.
Hernandez-Flores also shared that he had been angry with his father before the shootings after he heard a relative accused him of sexual abuse.
“I want to apologize,” he said to KTVU while in jail. “I didn’t voluntarily want to do this. Our heavenly father knows I didn’t do this with the intent to kill my father — especially my sister’s mom, who had nothing to do with this.”
During Hernandez-Flores’ interview from jail, he said that he served with the U.S. Marine Corps for more than four years before being honorably discharged, KTVU reported. He also shared that he had been hoping to join the San Francisco Police Department ahead of the killings.
Hernandez-Flores is set to be sentenced on February 27, according to the district attorney’s office.
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