Two men are now charged in a 3-year-old girl’s alleged “exorcism” death. Authorities in San Jose, California say that the child’s grandfather Rene Trigueros Hernandez, 59, and uncle Rene Hernandez-Santos, 19, joined mother Claudia Hernandez-Santos, 25, in fatally abusing young Arely Naomi Proctor.
“Around 7:00 p.m., Defendant 2 [the uncle] knelt down beside the victim who was lying on the floor, and he placed one hand on the victim’s chest and one hand on her back,” a statement of facts says. “He applied pressure to the victim and maintained pressure for approximately 10 minutes. He stated the victim was alive at the beginning of this and he closed his eyes to pray. Upon opening his eyes, he believed the victim had died. They continued to pray and did not perform any lifesaving measures for the victim.”
Claudia, the mother, was charged back in January with felony child abuse causing death. Her brother and father were only recently arrested, with police saying they took the men into custody on Wednesday on the very same charge.
As previously alleged, Claudia took the child to the grandfather’s San Jose church on the morning of Sept. 24, believing the girl to be possessed by a demon. The grandfather confirmed to Mercury News in a report earlier this week that they intended to “liberate her of her evil spirits” but denied that she died by his own hands.
“If you read the Bible, you’ll see that Jesus casts away demons and made sick people healthy again,” said the grandfather, identified in the article as Rene Huezo, pastor of Iglesia Apostoles y Profetas. “It’s not when I want to do it, it’s when God, in his will, wants to heal the person. The preacher is like an instrument of God. What we do is what God says.”
Untrained readers of the Bible are a hazard to the public.
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