Murder Suspect Seen With Shovel Before Rachel Morin Vanished: Trial Testimony

BEL AIR, MD — The man charged with the brutal killing of mother of five Rachel Morin hid in the woods with a shovel, according to witness testimony in the murder trial of Victor Martinez Hernandez. On Thursday, jury members heard from the defendant's family members with whom he had lived in the Bel Air area.

Martinez Hernandez, 24, is the El Salvadoran national accused of raping and killing Morin, who was found dead near a popular Bel Air walking trail in August 2023. The night Morin went missing, Kyle Stacy and his girlfriend, Olivia, were walking their dog along the Ma and Pa Heritage Trail when he heard a tree branch snap. Then he saw a man in the woods holding what was later determined to be a shovel.

“I saw a man in the woods — just out there,” Stacy testified Wednesday in Harford County Circuit Court. “I think he felt like he got caught, so to speak.”

The man was holding what looked like a walking stick, he said, and wearing sunglasses and a gray sweatshirt with the hood up. Stacy said he felt “pretty nervous and uncomfortable” and believed the man was “acting sneaky,” The Baltimore Banner reported.

Moments later, Stacy and his girlfriend walked past a woman they later learned was Rachel Morin. She was wearing Apple Airpods, an Apple Watch and was alone.

Harford County Sheriff’s Lt. Brandon Underhill testified Wednesday that he responded on Aug. 14, 2023, to investigate a cellphone that was continuously pinging in an area off the trail where a searcher had found Morin’s body near a drainage tunnel. That’s when Underhill said he saw a garden shovel.

Investigators later showed the shovel to Stacy, who identified it as the object the man in the woods was using as a walking stick.

Jose Hernandez of Temple Hills, the defendant's cousin, testified through a Spanish interpreter that his cousin lived with him for about five months before leaving in May 2024. He testified that he didn't know where Martinez Hernandez was going, reported WJLA.

"He took some clothing and then he didn't come back," Hernandez said.

Hernandez gave investigators home surveillance video of Martinez Hernandez wearing a flat brim hat, likely the same one seen in the suspect photos released by the Harford County Sheriff's Office after his arrest. The hat was a Christmas present from Hernandez to his cousin.

Martinez Hernandez had asked his cousin to buy him a ticket to Texas, but Hernandez refused, according to WJLA. Another cousin, Tania Hernandez, also testified Thursday that Martinez Hernandez stayed with her and her husband at their home in Alexandria, Virginia.

The former general manager at the Popeye's restaurant in the 500 block of the Baltimore Pike in Bel Air, told the court she hired Martinez Hernandez on June 17, 2023, less than two months before Morin was killed. A former coworker told the jury he worked with the defendant for a month at Barrett's on the Pike, a restaurant next door to Popeye's.

A former roommate of the defendant, Marcos Ernesto, testified they lived in a house by a park in Bel Air during the summer of 2023. He informed Martinez Hernandez that he had to move out of the home because of his behavior, WJLA reported.

"I told [him] we had to live separately because there had been bad habits, and things like that, bad understandings," Ernesto testified.