by Annie Sweeney, Chicago Sun-Times

July 15, 2005

A day before he was to return to active duty, a U.S. Marine stood on a Chicago street and begged his cousin for help.

Moises Hernandez had just come home from Iraq last month and was having nightmares and didn't want to go back to the war, he told his cousin, according to prosecutors. "Shoot me," Hernandez allegedly told his cousin.

The cousin was hesitant at first, then relented and allegedly shot Hernandez in the leg early Saturday morning.

Hernandez told police he was hit by random gang gunfire in his Belmont Cragin neighborhood. People in the community quickly organized an anti-violence rally Saturday night.

But after police sorted through the story over the weekend, Hernandez was charged with a felony for filing a false police report about the shooting in the 4200 block of West Schubert. His cousin Juan Hernandez, also 19, has been charged with felony weapons charges and is scheduled to appear in court today.

On Monday, Hernandez returned to his unit at Camp Pendleton in California, where the incident remained under investigation, a spokesman from the Marines said.

Moises' father, Ray Hernandez, said his son was obviously troubled when he returned home at the end of June. He had nightmares, would roam the house flipping the lights on and off, and sometimes would shake at night.

His son had been sent to Indonesia after the tsunami hit last December and talked about the dead bodies he saw floating in the ocean. In Iraq, he also saw death up close, his father said.

"It hurt me to hear him say what he had to do,'' said Hernandez, 43. "Whatever he experienced changed him totally."

He has not had a chance to fully discuss the incident with his son, but Ray Hernandez was gratified to hear Thursday that the military was providing him with counseling.

"I am sure my son is not the only one affected,'' he said. "I am sure a lot of them don't come back with a straight mind. ... The only thing my son is guilty of is making a bad decision. I still love my son. He made a bad decision.''

Hernandez was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, which was attached to the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The unit returned June 5 from a six-month deployment that included one month in Iraq, the spokesman said. The unit was possibly going to redeploy at the beginning of next year.

Moises Hernandez joined the Marines in 2003 to escape gang violence, said his father, who has spent more than 10 years fighting against gangs in the Northwest Side community. That year, Moises and his father were both jumped by gang members, and together they decided the military might be an option out of the neighborhood for Moises.

On Thursday, Ray Hernandez said he was worried about his son, but was also bothered that his son and the cousin were able to get a handgun from gang members so easily. "The problem is the gangs, the easy access to the guns,'' he said. "If he wasn't able to have easy access to guns, this wouldn't have happened."


As originally published