A 37-year-old Pharr resident sentenced to 86 years in prison for the crack cocaine-fueled strangulation murder of his mother’s home health care provider has killed himself.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice filed a custodial death report Thursday with the Texas Attorney General’s Office regarding Juan Manuel Hernandez’s Oct. 31 suicide.
TDCJ guards discovered Hernandez at around 4:35 p.m. that day with a “torn cloth ligature around his neck.”
Jail staff cut the ligature and attempted CPR and Hernandez was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 11:47 p.m., according to the report.
During his trial and at his sentencing for killing Maria Alise Garza in late October of 2017, Hernandez never said why he killed the woman.
