Driver in ’99 Bike Death Sane

Despite his mental illness, a Buena Park man knew what he was doing when he ran his car into a bicyclist, then drove him 13 miles as the victim bled to death in the passenger seat, jurors found Wednesday.

After three days days of deliberations that they later described as tearful and intense, jurors concluded that Isidro Calderon Hernandez, 30, was sane when he killed John La Bord, 18, in August 1999.

“It was a heartbreaking case, but we did think he had the thought capacity to know exactly what he was doing,” said jury forewoman Helen Boggs, 56, of Santa Ana. “Now our biggest hope is that Isidro will get some help in prison and both families will have some peace.”

Hernandez could be imprisoned for 25 years to life when he is sentenced April 9.

Hernandez “had so much goal-directed conduct,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Howard Gundy, who prosecuted the case, said outside Judge Frank F. Fasel’s Santa Ana courtroom. Still, the prosecutor recognized that the families of both the victim and the killer are reeling from the tragedy.

“You don’t take any joy in the verdict in a case like this,” he said.

La Bord’s family was not present when the verdict was read. Hernandez’s parents, who attended every day of the three-week trial, left the courthouse without speaking to reporters.

On Jan. 28, the same jury found Hernandez guilty of first-degree murder, kidnapping, felony hit-and-run and filing a false insurance claim.

During the trial’s weeklong sanity phase, mental health experts gave their opinions on Hernandez’s sanity.

One forensic psychiatrist testified that Hernandez’s schizophrenia eliminated his capacity to think logically, pointing to a 1995 incident in which he was arrested after police found him naked in a trash bin.

Another psychiatrist, Dr. Kaushal Sharma, told jurors that in two interviews with Hernandez, the defendant appeared to be faking his symptoms.

Hernandez said he didn’t know the answers to even the simplest questions such as his age, Sharma said, which even young children are capable of grasping.

“It’s nonsense,” Sharma testified. “He is no more insane than you or I.”

Jurors said they considered Hernandez’s actions immediately after the murder, such as washing the blood off his car and keeping an appointment with a chiropractor to ensure that his workers’ compensation payments would continue.

Also on their minds, Boggs said, was a collision three months before La Bord died in which Hernandez hit a bicyclist in Anaheim then fled.

“All the bits and pieces together pointed to him having to know,” she said. “He’d already done it once. Whether he had evil intent, though, we don’t know.”

Despite finding him sane, the jurors agreed that Hernandez had a mental illness that went untreated, resulting in the killing. The case pointed to problems within the mental health system because of the difficulties Hernandez’s family had with getting help for their son, Boggs said.

Still hoarse after the days of deliberations, the retired lab technician said she plans to send her jury earnings to a charity that helps the mentally ill.

“It brought tears to our eyes that if the system [had] worked better for this family,” Boggs said, “that boy would never have been killed.”