Three Convicted of Murdering Beaverton Teen

Release date: 12/06/2010
Sponsored by: District Attorney Department

Men Convicted of Murder

 
Murder victim Alexander Hernandez-Apale
 
Alex Hernandez was carrying cinnamon rolls home to his family's apartment in downtown Beaverton when a car approached.  The car slowed as three Soreno gang members stared him down.  When Alex Hernandez raised his hands as if to say, "What?" the car stopped and the three men jumped out.  The men, Nicholas Sias, Macial Munoz, and Duane Corbett, chased down Alex Hernandez in the parking lot of the Hall Street Grill and stabbed him to death.  The entire event took less than two minutes, according to a surveillance camera on the Standard TV and Appliance building located across the street.
 
Sias, Munoz, and Corbett are members of a Sureños gang subset called Los Asesinos (Assassins in English).  After the murder, the three disguised the getaway vehicle, hid evidence, and fled from law enforcement.  Munoz and Corbett were arrested by U.S. Marshals in Eugene on their way to Mexico on September 11, 2009.  After disconnecting his phone and giving 30 days notice to his apartment manager, Sias was finally arrested on September 14, 2009. 

During a four week trial, Deputy District Attorneys Bracken McKey and Kevin Barton presented DNA evidence, video evidence, eye-witness testimony, and jail calls made by the three defendants threatening and intimidating witnesses.  It took a Washington County jury comprised of six men and six women approximately five hours to unanimously convict all three of murder on November 19, 2010. 

On December 2, 2010, Washington County Judge Gayle Nachtigal sentenced each of the three defendants to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years.  Calling the three "a pack of jackals," Judge Nachtigal explained their sentence was far less than the sentence they had cruelly imposed on Alex Hernandez the night of August 31, 2009.  

Alex Hernandez leaves behind his mother, father and 16 year-old brother. He would have been a senior in high school.

Read more about the trial and the sentencing in The Oregonian articles.