Mexican cop sentenced for Georgetown sex assault
By Isadora Vail | Wednesday, March 12, 2008, 10:04 AM

A Mexican police officer will spend at least the next 60 years in prison for raping and impregnating a 12-year-old girl in Georgetown in 2006.

Salvador Hernandez, 35, pleaded guilty last week to two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and a jury recommended that he serve 75 years in prison for one count and life for the other.

At a sentencing hearing Wednesday, District Judge Ken Anderson ordered that Hernandez serve the sentences consecutively. He will not be eligible for parole until he is 95 years old.

Hernandez showed no emotion as a translator told him his sentence.

District Attorney John Bradley said that Hernandez would regularly travel back and forth between Georgetown and the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where he lived and worked as a police officer. Bradley said Hernandez worked in the town of Santiago Juxtlahuaca in southern Mexico.

Hernandez’s attorney, Gavino Mendez of Austin, would not comment on the case. The girl was raped in October and November in 2006, according to his arrest affidavit. Hernandez threatened to kill her and her mother if she said anything, according to the affidavit.

Hernandez returned to Mexico in January 2007 and the next month, the girl’s mother began noticing that her daughter was gaining weight and was sick all the time, Bradley said. That’s when the girl came forward with the rape allegations, he said.

She terminated the pregnancy, under the advisement of a doctor, because having the baby would be dangerous to her health, Bradley said.

Hernandez returned to Georgetown in April 2007, and went to the Georgetown Police Department to inquire about renewing his car registration. A clerk recognized him, called authorities and Hernandez confessed to a detective, Bradley said.
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