Slain Wife Had Long Feared Husband’s Temper

Neighbors and family members of a woman whose husband killed her and then plunged from a freeway overpass said Saturday that the couple had a volatile relationship.

“I guess he just went nuts,” Liz Hernandez said of her brother-in-law, Osmin Ernesto Bonilla, 28.

On Friday afternoon, Bonilla gunned down his wife, Alejandra Hernandez, 21, outside her family’s home in South-Central Los Angeles. He then drove to a Century Freeway connector to the northbound Harbor Freeway, shot himself and fell onto the southbound Harbor Freeway below, killing a driver and injuring her passenger.

On Saturday, a shrine of flowers and candles had been erected as a memorial to Hernandez outside the home in the 600 block of West 45th Street.

Family members gathered on the front lawn said that Hernandez and Bonilla, married six years, had three daughters, 18-month-old twins and a 3-year-old. Hernandez was a nurse.

The children and their parents had lived on North Marengo Avenue in Pasadena until about three weeks ago, according to neighbors there, who said Hernandez often complained about her husband’s temper and repeatedly vowed to leave him.

One woman said Hernandez hastily packed some belongings into a van on the night she finally left, fearing Bonilla’s return from a stay in the hospital.

“She told me he had choked her one night and then cut his own wrists with a knife,” said the woman, who would not give her name. “She always talked about him being violent, verbally and sometimes physically.”

Another neighbor described Bonilla as heartbroken after Hernandez left.

“He came knocking on my door one night, totally drunk,” said the man, who also declined to give his name. “He wanted me to drink some beers with him, but I just walked him home and put him in bed.” Bonilla, he said, later apologized about the incident and seemed embarrassed about it.

Sandra Dwyer, 32, was driving south on the Harbor Freeway when Bonilla’s body struck her car. She was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where she died Friday. Her passenger, Terry Gray, was treated for injuries and released from Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.

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The Times was unable to reach Gray’s or Dwyer’s family Saturday.