An illegal alien from El Salvador has been charged with brutally raping and murdering Rachel Morin, a mother-of-five, on a Maryland hiking trail last year.
Victor Martinez-Hernandez, 23, was arrested for the murder in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Friday.
Harford County Sherriff Jeffrey Gahler told reporters during a press conference on Saturday, “Rachel’s murderer is no longer a free man and, hopefully, he will never have the opportunity to walk free again.”
The violent migrant has ties to El Salvadorian gangs and is implicated in at least one other murder.
“Victor Hernandez did not come to this country to make a better life for him or his family, he came here to escape the crimes he committed in El Salvador. He came here to murder Rachel and God-willing, no one else,” Gahler continued.
“But that should have never been allowed to happen.”
The New York Post reports:
The accused killer illegally crossed into the US in February 2023 after he vicously murdered another young woman.
Martinez-Hernandez was in the US for six months before he allegedly targeted Morin while she was walking alone on the Ma & Pa Heritage Trail in Bel Air.
Her naked body suffered such severe trauma that family said it looked as though “her head had been smashed in with a rock.”
About a month after the killing, police matched Martinez-Hernandez’s DNA to a sample recovered at the scene of a home invasion and assault of a young girl in Los Angeles.
Martinez-Hernandez has been charged with first-degree murder and first-degree rape.
