Salvadoran Immigrant Arrested in Maryland for Rape and Murder of Local Mother
Over the recent weekend, Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, a 23-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador, was charged with the rape and murder of Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old mother of five from Maryland. Hernandez, who unlawfully entered the United States in February 2023, was apprehended by the police and the FBI in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He supposedly embarked on a crime spree beginning in El Salvador and extending to several U.S. cities. Six months after his entry into the U.S., Morin was murdered in August 2023 while hiking on the Ma & Pa trail in Harford County, Maryland; her body was later discovered in a nearby culvert. According to Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler, Hernandez did not immigrate for a better life but to evade charges for his crimes in El Salvador. Sheriff Gahler expressed deep concern about the broader implications of the U.S. border crisis, emphasizing the impact on public safety far from the southern border and calling on the Biden administration and Congress to address the failed immigration policies. This tragedy marks the second instance in two years where a woman from Harford County was killed by a criminal with a similar background.
An illegal immigrant from El Salvador was arrested over the weekend and charged with the murder and rape of a Maryland mother of five.
Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, 23, who police say unlawfully entered the United States in February 2023, was arrested by police and the FBI in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday. He is accused of raping and murdering 37-year-old Rachel Morin six months after illegally crossing the southern U.S. border. Law enforcement said the suspect had been on a “crime spree that started in El Salvador and then multiple cities across the United States.”
Morin was murdered in August 2023 after she went out hiking on the Ma & Pa trail in Harford County, Maryland. She was later found naked in a nearby culvert.
“Victor Hernandez did not come to this country to make a better life for him or his family, he came here to escape the crimes he committed in El Salvador. He came here to murder Rachel and God-willing, no one else,” Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler said on Saturday. “But that should have never been allowed to happen.”
The sheriff also called for the Biden administration to address the ongoing border crisis.
“I want to now direct these comments to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and to every member in both chambers of Congress,” he continued. “Here in Harford County we are 1,800 miles away from the Southern border, and the American citizens are not safe because of failed immigration policies. This is the second time in just two years that an innocent Harford County woman has lost her life to a criminal in our country illegally.”
Investigators said that they identified Hernandez because they found his DNA at the murder scene. Police arrested him at a bar in Tulsa and said he “lied about his true identity.”
Hernandez is also suspected of a January 2023 murder in El Salvador and of assaulting a 9-year-old girl in California. According to the Tulsa Police Department, Hernandez “violently assaulted a 9-year-old girl and her mother during a home invasion” in Los Angeles.
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Police also said that they believe Hernandez has extensive ties to violent gangs in El Salvador.
Patricia Morin, the mother of Rachel, discussed that she did not believe that her daughter’s killer was going to be found.
“At some of the points during this, I didn’t think that we were ever going to have an answer and that it would be a cold case,” she said. “At one point when things looked really bleak and hopeless, the lead detective told me, ‘Patience will win in the end.’”
Illegal immigrants have been arrested this year for a string of high-profile crimes, including the murder of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley in Georgia, as lawmakers have called on the Biden administration to enact stricter border security measures.
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