John Jefferson
Insets from left: Leiner Miranda Lopez and Cesar Santana (Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office). Luz Hernandez (Facebook). Background: The location where the remains of Hernandez were found (WABC).
The second suspect accused in the beating and strangling death of a New Jersey kindergarten teacher and mother of three whose body was found in a shallow grave is in custody on U.S. soil after being extradited from Colombia.
Fugitive Leiner Miranda Lopez, 28, was arrested on Wednesday in the 2023 death of Luz Hernandez, 33, Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez announced in a news release.
Lopez was extradited from Colombia to the U.S. after Colombian authorities arrested him on June 14, 2023, under a U.S. provisional arrest request, prosecutors said. He was handed over to the custody of U.S. officials at Newark Liberty International Airport and is being held at the Hudson County Correctional Facility.
He was charged in 2023 with murder, hindering, failing to dispose of human remains in a manner prescribed by law, tampering with evidence and desecrating/concealing human remains, prosecutors said. Hernandez’s estranged husband and father of her children, Cesar Santana, 38, also faces charges in the case, Law&Crime reported.
Hernandez was first reported missing by her family on Feb. 6, 2023, when she didn’t show up for work at her job as a kindergarten teacher at BelovED Community Charter School in Jersey City.
When officers searched her apartment, they found “apparent bloodstains in the bedroom, cleaning supplies, a mop, and a faint smell of bleach,” according to an affidavit previously reported on by Law&Crime.
Hernandez’s body was found in a shallow grave the following day on Feb. 7, 2023, in an industrial area three miles away from her Jersey City apartment. She had suffered blunt force trauma to the head and compressions to the neck, the medical examiner ruled.
As authorities investigated, they found records showing that Santana’s Honda was impounded the day before Hernandez’s disappearance because of an expired registration. Officers observed Santana and another man loading a black and yellow bin into the vehicle and took possession of the car after citing Santana.
When police searched Santana’s car, they located “a large black and yellow bin with wheels, a shovel with apparent black hairs, a pick axe, rope with apparent black hair and blood stains, and clear plastic sheeting with apparent bloodstains and soil,” the affidavit states. “The rope matched the rope near the grave.”
The day after Hernandez was reported missing, Santana attended church with their children, a cousin told New York’s WNBC.
“He went to the church with kids like nothing happened,” the cousin told the outlet.
He was found days later at a motel in Miami and was arrested.
The victim’s family, friends, colleagues and young students grappled with the loss.
In tears and holding a handwritten note, one of her 6-year-old students paid her respects to her teacher during a candlelight vigil.
“I love you,” the girl said, reciting her note as tears streamed down her face, in an interview with WNBC.
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