Local News in Brief : Mother Whose Boyfriend Beat Child to Death Gets Probation

A woman whose 3-year-old daughter died after repeated beatings by the woman’s boyfriend was placed on probation for five years Monday in Van Nuys Superior Court.

Kathleen Langer Hernandez, 25, who lived in Van Nuys at the time of her daughter’s death, could have been sentenced to seven years in state prison.

Judge James A. Albracht also ordered her to continue undergoing counseling and perform 100 hours of community service work.

Hernandez pleaded guilty Jan. 30 to involuntary manslaughter in the case. In return for her plea, prosecutors said she would be put on probation if an investigation by the county Probation Department confirmed she did not abuse the child.

Candace Langer, Hernandez’s daughter by a previous marriage, died April 16, 1983, after Hernandez and her boyfriend took the child to Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Panorama City saying the girl had suffered a head wound in an accidental fall.

The woman’s boyfriend, Larry Hernandez, 26, whom she later married, was sentenced in March, 1985, to six years in state prison for child endangering and intentionally inflicting great bodily injury upon a child.

Doctors who examined the child said she had been severly beaten numerous times in the weeks before her death.