A Santa Ana woman who sliced her husband to death after an Easter party fight pleaded guilty today to manslaughter.
Janeth Hernandez, 30, could be sentenced up to 12 years in state prison at a scheduled Oct. 14 hearing in Santa
Ana after being convicted on one felony count of
manslaughter and a sentencing enhancement for the personal use of a
deadly weapon.
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Hernandez and hubby Carlos Humberto Vallejo were
scheduled to go to a family event for Easter, but they instead attended
a different party in Santa Ana on April 4, 2010. After midnight, she
drove home without him, then later returned to pick him up.
In the early morning hours of April 5, as other family members were
asleep, the couple got into a verbal argument. Hernandez picked up a
knife and sliced Vallejo's thigh. Other family members heard screaming
and a thud before discovering Vallejo on the floor of a room and
bleeding profusely from the leg. A family
member called 9-1-1 while others tried to assist Vallejo, but he died at
the scene.
The Mrs. was originally charged with murder and was facing a maximum sentence of 26 years to life in state prison.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.