Lilian Hernandez-Paredes doesn't want to talk about whether police were justified in killing her son.
She won't say if she's upset with the officers whose violent struggle with Edgar Hernandez ended with his lying dead, from one or more gunshot wounds, in the hallway of a Salt Lake apartment complex.
Hernandez-Paredes wants to talk about changing the system that she says pushed her troubled 18-year-old son deeper into anti-social behavior and made it harder for her to help him.
It started, she says, in 1993. A single mother, she moved her four children from gang-infested Los Angeles to the Rose Park area in Salt Lake City. Instead of the wholesome environment she'd hoped for, Hernandez-Paredes said her son, 11 at the time, was ridiculed by non-Hispanic classmates. The segregation pushed him toward gangs, she said.
By age 14, Hernandez began his frequent pattern of moving from one group home or juvenile center to the next. Along the way he formed a network of delinquent friends, who his mother believes helped him escalate into more aberrant behavior.
"No matter where they sent him, they sent him with kids that had problems and then they had that network," Hernandez-Paredes said.
She tried several times to throw away her son's gang clothing and buy him new clothes when he'd come home to visit, but he'd always find a way to get them back.
Meanwhile, when Hernandez wasn't in a youth facility, he found it harder and harder to relate when he was at home.
His time away from family seemed to be driving a wedge between Hernandez and his mother. She felt increasingly helpless to reach her son, and Hernandez seemed to resent his family more and more.
"He just felt like his mother didn't love him and he was just depressed about that," a friend of Hernandez told the Deseret News. "I think he just felt like nobody cared about him and that's why he was running like he was."
Unsure how to help her son, Hernandez-Paredes worried something drastic would eventually happen.
"I was afraid, and I knew that something was going to happen," Hernandez-Paredes said. "I knew that there were two options — him being killed or killing somebody and going to jail forever."
Saturday, it happened, although sooner than she'd expected.
The weekend started with one of Hernandez's friends committing suicide late Friday or early Saturday during a party.
That morning Hernandez came to visit his mother at LDS Hospital. She'd just given birth to her fifth child, Jonathan.
Hernandez held his baby brother and took photos with the family before leaving the hospital.
A few hours later he ended up at the apartment of a friend, James Vigil.
Hernandez made plans with a friend at 4:15 p.m. to go to Midvale Park for a Cinco de Mayo celebration at 6 p.m.
He never made it.
Vigil said he and Hernandez were smoking cigarettes and hanging out inside the Central City apartment when they heard a knock on the door.
The people knocking didn't identify themselves as police, Vigil said.
Hernandez opened the door to find two uniformed officers standing outside.
"They asked if his name was Edgar," Vigil said. "He said, 'No, I'm not.' "
Vigil said that after talking with Hernandez for a few moments, the officers grabbed Hernandez and wrestled him to the ground. The officers then told Vigil to go back inside. Vigil said he heard shouting and wrestling outside his door for about five minutes and then a gunshot, followed by Hernandez screaming, and a second gunshot.
When Vigil burst out of the apartment, police escorted him outside and told him not to look at Hernandez's body.
By about 5 p.m. Hernandez was dead in the hallway.
Vigil said he couldn't tell if Hernandez was handcuffed as he lay in the hall, or where he'd been shot. Vigil was handcuffed and booked into jail on some outstanding warrants.
"I didn't think they were going to shoot him," Vigil said. "They didn't have no reason to shoot — they had him on the ground."
Police arrived at the apartment for some follow-up on an assault Hernandez was allegedly involved in on the west side of town. One friend said the fight involved Hernandez and his brother-in-law. Police also discovered Hernandez was wanted on some outstanding warrants.
Police say the two officers called for backup when the fight became violent and several officers responded. During the scuffle, one of the officers "perceived a threat" and shot Hernandez, police said.
Since the shooting, Salt Lake police have released few details about what happened — whether Hernandez was armed, what the perceived threat was or who fired the lethal shot or shots.
Wildly varying rumors have circulated, ranging from Hernandez being shot while he was handcuffed to Hernandez being killed because he disarmed one of the police officers and was going to use the gun.
Salt Lake Police Department internal affairs and the District Attorney's Office are both investigating the incident, and police department officials have declined to make any further statements until both investigations are completed.
Two of the officers involved in the incident are on paid administrative leave.
Two days since losing her oldest son, Hernandez-Paredes sits in the living room of her Bountiful home, her newborn boy sleeping peacefully in his rocker.
"When things like this happen, they need to happen, and I don't feel it's anyone's responsibility (that he died)," Hernandez-Paredes said. "At least he is now free like he wanted to be."
E-mail: djensen@desnews.com