Mike on Crime

By Mike McIntyre
Winnipeg Free Press

Virginia Hernando claims she had no choice but to kill her husband.

The 61-year-old Winnipeg woman began her manslaughter trial Monday by pleading not guilty on the basis of self-defence. Her 62-year-old husband, Alejandro, died of a single stab wound to his heart following a September 2006 dispute inside the couple’s Fort Rouge home.

They had been married for 37 years and had four children and three grandchildren.

“I didn’t mean to do this. It’s just so unfortunate,” a sobbing Hernando said in a videotaped interview with police just hours after the slaying.

She described a long and difficult marriage. The couple had slept apart since 1999 and clashed daily over their financial struggles, which were compounded by regularly sending money home to family members in the Philippines. Hernando said her husband would drink about half a bottle of vodka every day and become verbally and physically abusive when he was drunk.

“That’s when it starts, problems,” she told police. “He’ll abuse me. He just keeps me crying.”

Hernando was employed as an aide at the Riverview Health Centre, while her husband worked at a local food-processing plant.

The couple had fallen behind on their taxes and were missing payments on their Morley Avenue home, court was told.

“You seem to me like a very nice lady who’s had a very hard time with the situation and the pressures,” Det.-Sgt. Mike Sutherland told Hernando in the interview.

She said friends would often encourage her to leave her husband but she couldn’t walk away.

“I said no because he’s drinking, he’s sick. I was just worried,” she said.

On the night of the killing, Hernando said, she argued with her intoxicated husband about his desire to send money back home to help a relative undergoing cancer treatment.

She told him they didn’t have the funds to help.

“He was just swearing at me, telling me ‘Oh, you’re an idiot. If you can’t get the money tomorrow, you’ll see, I’ll kill you,’” she told police.

Hernando said he began punching her and she ran to her bedroom to grab a paring knife that she hid to protect herself from him.

“And then I hit him. He said ‘Oh, why did you go and do that?’ I said ‘Well, you’re trying to hit me, what could I do? I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’” she said.

Hernando quickly tried to stop the bleeding from her husband’s chest and called 911. A recording of her frantic call — in which she says she acted in self-defence — was played in court Monday.

Alejandro was rushed to hospital but doctors were unable to save his life.

Police found the bloody knife on the bedroom floor. Hernando later told police she always had to defend herself against his attacks.

“I’m getting ready all the time, you know. Every time he comes upstairs and tries to hit me, I’m always getting ready. I put my knife under the pillow, just getting ready. You know, just protecting myself,” she said.

Hernando said she regretted not phoning police after her husband began threatening her, but feared a violent reprisal had she been caught.

The trial is being heard by a judge alone.

Hernando has been free on bail since the killing.