State Board Grants Parole To Man Convicted In Toddler's Death
By Bay City News
A man convicted of second-degree murder for killing a toddler more than a decade ago was granted parole, according to Monterey County prosecutors.
The county District Attorney's Office said that following a meeting on Tuesday, the California Board of Parole Hearings affirmed its approval of parole for David Leonardo, who served less than 13 years in custody.
Leonardo was serving a 15 years to life in prison sentence for second-degree murder after being found guilty of killing Priscilla Rose Hernandez, a 2-year-old girl, in 2011.
"This was the inmate's second parole hearing, and the first subsequent hearing after the governor in March 2023 overturned a parole grant of October 2022 at the inmate's first parole hearing," the District Attorney's Office said.
Just before 1:20 p.m. on Dec. 3, 2011, Monterey County deputies and firefighters were alerted to a call of a non-responsive child. Leonardo was upstairs yelling for the deputies to come upstairs. As deputies entered the upstairs bedroom, they saw Leonardo holding Hernandez, who was not wearing a shirt and had several visible bruises on her body, including her lower abdomen.
Deputies said her eyes were open, her body pale and motionless and she was unconscious. They also found that her extremities were cool to the touch and that she had an open airway.
According to authorities, Hernandez had suffered blunt force trauma to her abdomen that caused tears in the lining of her abdomen and in her colon, which led to internal bleeding, causing her death shortly afterward. Her injuries to her mouth also indicated she was smothered sometime within 24 hours before her death.
Leonardo told investigators he got mad and hit Priscilla after she threw a tantrum about her mother leaving. She did not speak after that, authorities said.
Despite a multi-page signed petition from the public and pleas from the victim's parent and both grandmothers to deny Leonardo parole at a hearing on April 23, a Board of Parole Hearings panel "asserted that their grant was based on the work the inmate had done during incarceration to transform and rehabilitate himself."
This time, Gov. Gavin Newsom did not overturn the second parole grant and sent it to the Board on Aug. 30 for review. The District Attorney's Office said that during the Tuesday hearing, prosecutors argued that Leonardo did not "demonstrate true remorse, instead, engaging in self-serving deception and impression management."
"Leonardo's portrayal of events selectively omitted aspects of the commission of the crime, for example, he had previously admitted he may have put his hand over the victim's mouth at some point. Members of the public and inmate's family spoke in favor of parole and members of the public and victim's family spoke in opposition," the District Attorney's Office said.
