(NewsNation) — Rachel Morin’s mother, Patty, says the arrest in her daughter’s killing is not “going to change the outcome” but their family will “work towards a resolution in the grief.”
Authorities arrested Victor Martinez Hernandez in the killing of Rachel Morin, a Harford County, Maryland mother whose body was found near a popular hiking trail in August 2023.
Hernandez, 23, had illegally crossed the border into the U.S. in February 2023, after murdering another young woman in El Salvador a month earlier, according to authorities.
Patty Morin told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo on Monday that their family had waited 10 months for any “solid information.”
“We had DNA, but it was hanging in limbo. It’s not like you could rest,” Patty Morin said on “CUOMO.”
Patty hopes the world knows that Rachel “lived life fearlessly” and that she was “very loving and compassionate toward people.”
“She loved life. To have somebody just take it from her, to rob her of her future and then also her children’s future. … She would have gotten the news that she was going to be a grandmother for the first time if she had lived, and now her grandchildren are never gonna know (her). It’s devastating,” Patty Morin added.
What do we know about Hernandez?
DNA taken from the Rachel Morin crime scene had been linked to an unidentified suspect in a Los Angeles home invasion, according to authorities.
“It is my understanding that this suspect, this monster, fled to the United States after the murder of a young woman in El Salvador a month earlier in January of 2023,” Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler said. “Once in our country, he brutally attacked a 9-year-old girl and her mother in a home invasion in March of 2023 in Los Angeles.”
Hernandez also has connections in the Washington, D.C., area, in both Virginia and Prince George’s County, and ties to known gangs, Gahler said.
NewsNation’s Urja Sinha contributed to this report.