After Trinidad Cervantes was nabbed for allegedly killing another driver on 165th Street in Hammond, his then-girlfriend admitted his stories changed.
Elena Hernandez, who met him in high school, said the post-shooting call was brief. But, she hesitated when asked what he said.
“Is that necessary,” she asked.
Yes, the judge and prosecutors responded.
“He said he shot somebody and was scared,” she said.
He showed up briefly at her father’s house where they all lived. She kicked him out, then called her dad, his boss, because Cervantes was driving a work box truck.
“I told him that Trinidad shot somebody,” she said.
When asked how she could have more details when the boyfriend’s call was so short, she added later on cross-examination she saw reports of the shooting on a Facebook page of a website that reprinted police press releases. Cervantes later called to tell her he loved her and asked for “his” money, which she later gave to his relative, she told Deputy Prosecutor Brad Carter.
After his arrest at a relative’s home in Cook County, Illinois, he talked about the case on jail calls.
In one, Cervantes claimed the victim Rajesh Bhagwandeen was reaching for a gun.
You had to “make it seem like they’re doing something to you,” Cervantes told her.
“La la la la,” Elena Hernandez appeared to say on the call, as if trying to cover up what he was saying.
On the stand, she started to cry.
On another call, Cervantes asked if police “found a gun” on the other man.
“You can’t talk about this on the phone,” she responded.
Judge Samuel Cappas told the jury that those and other calls played didn’t have reliable transcripts, because the audio quality was off. During deliberations, they could ask to hear the tapes again.
Police arrived at 5:09 p.m. May 3, 2023 to the crime scene near 165th Street and Calumet Avenue.
The driver’s door on 26-year-old mechanic Rajesh Bhagwandeen’s black 1996 BMW was still open. The car was in the middle of the street. It had four bullet holes with seven bullet casings found on the street. He had just left work at a nearby car dealership.
He was taken to the hospital after he was shot “several” times. Bhagwandeen was pronounced dead at 5:41 p.m. at Community Hospital, according to court records.
Earlier on Wednesday, Mike Hernandez, her father, testified he and co-worker Joe Trevino were working on a job cleaning out a foreclosed house in Chicago when his daughter called, saying Cervantes shot someone.
When they finished the job and came back to the Hammond industrial yard where he stored the trucks, cobs were there to arrest them. They were later released.
At the police station, cops had him call Cervantes.
“They got my box truck and everything, dude. They want to holler at you,” Hernandez appeared to say on video.
“You could say it’s self-defense,” Hernandez later tells Cervantes.
“I got PTSD,” Cervantes appears to respond. “He came up on me.”
On cross-examination, Hernandez told defense lawyer John Cantrell that Cervantes was like “my son” and he let him live with them. “He was worthy (of that.)”
Hernandez later admitted to a prosecutor he hired two lawyers for Cervantes.
He testified next to lawyer Mark Gruenhagen. Cappas told jurors Hernandez had risked possible legal jeopardy by potentially helping Cervantes, but was granted immunity on Wednesday’s testimony.
The trial continues this week.
