BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (Court TV) — A California mother who pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter after leaving her children in a hot car to visit a medical spa was sentenced to prison on Thursday.
Maya Hernandez appears in court during opening statements in her murder trial on Dec. 8, 2025. (Court TV)
Maya Hernandez had pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter and two enhancements to allegations of child cruelty; that plea came following a mistrial after a jury could not return a unanimous verdict on second-degree murder or involuntary manslaughter charges. Hernandez was sentenced in line with the agreement she reached with prosecutors: 15 years in prison and two strikes on her record.
Hernandez was arrested in June 2025 after leaving her 1- and 2-year-old children alone in a car on a hot and sunny day. 1-year-old Amilio Gutierrez was pronounced dead at a hospital with an internal temperature of 107 degrees. The older child survived and was placed into protective custody.
At her trial, Hernandez testified that she packed her sons in the car and intentionally left them with snacks while she went into the medical spa. While Hernandez left the children in the locked car with the vehicle running and the AC set to 60 degrees, the car is designed to shut off after one hour of inactivity. While court documents indicated Hernandez’s procedure only took 15-20 minutes, the children were left in the car alone for nearly two hours. Hernandez said it wasn’t until after her son’s death that she began to understand the consequences of her decisions.
“15 years doesn’t seem like enough,” Katie Martinez, Amilio’s paternal grandmother, said Thursday. “In my eyes and in the eyes of a father who had to visit his son in a cold grave, it is not enough.”
“Maya is going to prison. She already has a life sentence because of the loss of Amilio,” Judge Charles Brehmer said as he handed down the sentence. “Amilio won’t be forgotten.”
