Sacramento man suspected in wife’s Yolo death takes his life after El Dorado deputies find him
A Sacramento man suspected of killing his wife at a campground Sunday morning fatally shot himself hours later when approached by law enforcement in El Dorado County, authorities said.
The Yolo County Sheriff’s Office first responded to a welfare check just before 11 a.m. Sunday at Canyon Creek Resort, a campground along Putah Creek and Highway 128 near Winters, the Sheriff’s Office said in a Monday news release.
A reporting party told Yolo County dispatchers that a friend told him he had killed his wife and was going to take his own life, according to the news release.
Arriving deputies at Canyon Creek Resort located a deceased woman with a gunshot wound inside an RV, the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office said.
Authorities identified the suspect as the victim’s husband, 56-year-old Alfonso Hernandez Jr. of Sacramento, and sent a be-on-the-lookout bulletin for Hernandez to local law enforcement agencies along the Highway 50 corridor.
Deputies with the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office received the bulletin, then located Hernandez around 1 p.m. Sunday in his vehicle on Ice House Road near the town of White Hall, according to the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office. Deputies, with assistance from a California Highway Patrol helicopter, responded to the suspect’s vehicle.
El Dorado sheriff’s deputies approached the vehicle, “at which point the suspect shot himself and was later pronounced deceased,” the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office said in a separate news release.
According to the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office, the firearm believed to be used in the shooting of Hernandez’s wife was recovered at the El Dorado County scene.
Both sheriff’s offices and the CHP are continuing to investigate; the motive for the shootings is not known. Although identified as Hernandez’s wife, the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office’s did not release the victim’s name pending confirmation by the sheriff’s coroner’s division.
