Local News in Brief : Mother Pleads Guilty in Death of Daughter

A woman whose 3-year-old daughter died after repeated beatings by the woman’s boyfriend pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter Friday. In return for her plea, she probably will be put on probation instead of being sentenced to state prison.

Kathleen Langer Hernandez, 25, who lived in Van Nuys at the time of her daughter’s death, had requested a similar plea bargain in December, 1984. But a Van Nuys Superior Court judge refused the plea after Hernandez declined to admit her role in the April, 1983, death of her child, Candace Langer.

Hernandez’s boyfriend, Larry Hernandez, whom she later married, was sentenced in March to six years in state prison for child endangering and intentionally inflicting great bodily injury upon the child.

In an emotional and lengthy plea Friday before Van Nuys Superior Court Judge James A. Albracht, Kathleen Hernandez acknowledged that she knew her boyfriend was beating her daughter but did nothing to stop him.

Hernandez originally faced up to seven years in state prison for her role in the child’s death, but under terms of the plea bargain can expect to get probation if a probation report confirms that she did not actively abuse the child, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenneth Freeman. Albracht set sentencing for March 24.

A probation report filed in 1985 says Larry Hernandez struck the child repeatedly and caused her to hit her head against a cabinet. On April 16, 1983, the couple took the child to Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Panorama City, saying she had accidentally fallen.

The child died 10 days later, and a coroner’s report listed the cause of death as a blow to the head. Doctors who examined the child suspected that she had been abused.