Sansom Park man gets 14 years for killing wife’s lover

A Tarrant County jury sentenced a Sansom Park man to 14 years in prison on Thursday for killing his wife’s teen-age lover.

Luis Miguel Hernandez, 31, was convicted on Wednesday in the fatal stabbing of 18-year-old Devin Toler on June 20, 2013, during a fight outside a Fort Worth apartment complex where both men lived.

Hernandez must serve half of of his sentence before he is eligible for parole.

Toler had sex with Mary Fernandez, Luis Hernandez’s wife, about six or seven times, according to her testimony. Fernandez testified that she met Toler when they worked at a fast food restaurant when he was 17 and she was 29. Toler was a 2012 graduate of Lake Worth High School.

“He just kept pushing me and that’s what led to it,” said Fernandez, the mother of Hernandez’s four children.

Following his closing arguments in the punishment phase, Charlie Roach, Hernandez’s defense attorney, stormed out of state District Judge Louis Sturn’s courtroom after telling the jury that they had already caused a great deal of damage with their guilty verdict and that he did not know how they were going to fix it.

“I’m not going to tell you that I respect your verdict because it’s wrong,” Roach said. “You’re going to decide what you’re going to decide. But let’s not compound the damage.”

When a prosecutor asked what she told her children about their father’s trial, Fernandez said she never lies to her children.

“I told them their father had to protect himself,” Fernandez said. “He had to do what he had to do in order not to die. The jury got it really wrong. They don’t know Luis. He’s a good man who does everything for his kids.”

About a month before the fight, Hernandez tore a anterior cruciate ligament in his knee and could not get away from Toler once the fight started, Fernandez testified.

The two men both lived in the Wildwood Branch apartments in the 6220 block of Watermark Court.

Toler and his ex-girlfriend were playing with their 19-month-old daughter on the apartment complex’s outdoor basketball court when Hernandez came outside, according to a news release from the Tarrant County district attorney’s office.

Hernandez shouted racial slurs at Toler and called his daughter a derogatory name, which led to a fight. Hernandez pulled out a butter knife and stabbed Toler in the heart, according to the news release. Toler was taken to a local hospital where he died.

Prosecutor Tasha Foster said the last memory that Toler’s young daughter has of her father is seeing him stabbed on the basketball court.

“You don’t get to provoke a fistfight, stab someone with a knife and then claim self-defense,” Foster said in a news release. “Devin had an affair with the defendant’s wife, but did not deserve to die for it.”

This story was originally published December 4, 2014 at 5:34 PM with the headline "Sansom Park man gets 14 years for killing wife’s lover."