Grandpa Asked Caseworkers to Check on Child

The grandfather of slain Oxnard toddler Joselin Hernandez testified Friday that he was so concerned about a pattern of mysterious injuries to the little girl that he asked county social workers to check her condition daily.

“I told them that I wanted them to come and check the child on a daily basis because too many accidents were taking place with her,” Miguel Nieto testified during an emotional hearing on whether Joselin’s parents should stand trial for murder.

The 2-year-old was beaten to death earlier this year, and prosecutors have charged her 18-year-old parents with murder.

Gabriela and Rogelio Hernandez also face seven counts of felony child abuse for allegedly injuring the girl in the months before her June death.

Ending four days of somber testimony during the parents’ hearing, which is expected to continue next week, Nieto told Superior Court Judge Steven Z. Perren about the stormy events leading up to his granddaughter’s death.

At one point, he tearfully recalled how Joselin ran into his arms at his produce store just hours before she died.

“She was hugging me,” he said, speaking through a Spanish interpreter. “I felt like she was telling me to take her away from all this.”

Defense attorneys objected to the remark, and the judge ordered it stricken from the court record.

Nieto’s testimony began Friday as he recalled the day three years ago when Gabriela, then 15, moved out to live with Rogelio, then her boyfriend.

They had a child, Joselin, who at six weeks was taken away from the young parents amid abuse allegations and placed in the care of Nieto’s wife, Amor, he said.

For two years, the little girl lived with them. Nieto said he considered Joselin his daughter.

But in March, Amor Nieto was killed in a car accident and Joselin was returned to her parents, the grandfather tearfully explained.

In the months that followed, Nieto said, he started to notice changes in the little girl’s behavior and physical condition.

When she lived with her grandparents, Joselin was chubby and suffered only minor injuries from two accidents at the house, Nieto said. But after being returned to her parents’ care, Joselin lost weight and suffered a series of mysterious injuries, he said.

First there was a burn on her hand, which allegedly occurred when she turned on a hot water faucet in Mexico after her grandmother’s funeral, he said.

When he asked Rogelio Hernandez about the burn, Nieto said, his son-in-law told him that he “wasn’t going to believe it, but again, it was an accident.”

In the next few weeks, Joselin appeared with a cut on her forehead that Nieto said Rogelio Hernandez attributed to the girl falling from a milk crate in the produce store.

Later, Joselin complained of a pain in her arm and held it awkwardly when Nieto went to pick her up, he said.

Nieto told the judge that he never saw his daughter or son-in-law strike Joselin or even yell at her. And he said that he did not know how the injuries were inflicted.

“I would only see the results,” he said.

But the pattern of mysterious wounds eventually prompted him to ask social workers to keep a close eye on the child, he testified.

A few weeks later, Nieto said, he received a call that Joselin was gravely sick. That night, Rogelio Hernandez came to the produce store en route to the hospital.

“He was in anguish because the child was very ill,” Nieto said. “He was very spooked.”

In addition, Nieto said the son-in-law told him “that if God would save him from this one, he would love his daughter very much.”