{"id":262588,"date":"2026-04-11T12:01:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T12:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/262588\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T12:01:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T12:01:23","slug":"driver-in-canal-crash-that-killed-mom-and-son-in-fresno-charged-with-4-felonies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/262588\/","title":{"rendered":"Driver in canal crash that killed mom and son in Fresno charged with 4 felonies"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 22-year-old Fresno man is facing four felony charges, including vehicular manslaughter, for the hit-and-run crash that killed a 41-year-old mother and her 9-year-old son<\/a> in the early morning hours of April 6.<\/p>\n

Timothy Seth Chavez, who turned himself in to authorities<\/a> 19 hours after the double-fatal collision near McKinley Avenue and Fresno Street, remained in the Fresno County jail on Friday.<\/p>\n

A Fresno County Superior Court judge on Thursday ordered that Chavez be held without bail. He is due to be arraigned April 23.<\/p>\n

Chavez is charged with two counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and two counts of leaving the scene of an accident, with death or permanent serious injury.<\/p>\n

If convicted on all charges, he faces nine years and four months in prison.<\/p>\n

Fresno police said the crash happened at about 2 a.m. when Chavez, who was driving a Dodge SUV, ran a red light at the central Fresno intersection, slamming into a Honda Pilot driven by Martha Hernandez. Also in the car was her 9-year-old son Adrian.<\/p>\n

The force of the crash sent Hernandez\u2019s car across multiple lanes, over a median and into a nearby canal where first responders were able to pull Hernandez, the driver, from her Honda. She later died at the hospital.<\/p>\n

Adrian Hernandez\u2019s body was carried down the canal and pulled from the water about 3 miles from the crash site.<\/p>\n

The day of the crash, Martha Hernandez and her son were returning home from celebrating Easter in Madera. Hernandez worked at a nail salon in Clovis.<\/p>\n

Court records show Chavez does not have a felony arrest record. He was charged with one misdemeanor in June 2025 for having a concealed weapon, but that case was dismissed.<\/p>\n

\"Family<\/p>\n

Family and friends gather to remember Martha Hernandez and her 9-year-old son at Chosen Salon in Clovis, where she worked. The pair were killed early Monday in a hit-and-run crash that thrust their car into a Fresno canal.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A 9-year-old boy was pulled from a Fresno canal on Monday, April 6, 2026 after the vehicle he was in with his mother submerged near Fresno Street at McKinley Avenue.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A woman died after her vehicle went into a Fresno, California canal on Monday, April 6, 2026.<\/p>\n

(ANTHONY GALAVIZ\/agalaviz@fresnobee.com)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 22-year-old Fresno man is facing four felony charges, including vehicular manslaughter, for the hit-and-run crash that killed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[113324,4885,112,4071,7348,114,113,113322,113321,7349],"class_list":{"0":"post-262588","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-adrian-hernandez","9":"tag-felony-charges","10":"tag-fresno","11":"tag-fresno-county-jail","12":"tag-fresno-county-superior-court","13":"tag-fresno-headlines","14":"tag-fresno-news","15":"tag-martha-hernandez","16":"tag-timothy-seth-chavez","17":"tag-vehicular-manslaughter"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}