A Hoover gang member who shot and killed a 21-year-old man in Portland in 2015 and then testified against his fellow gang members in a racketeering conspiracy trial was sentenced Friday to 16 and a half years in federal prison.
Javier Fernando Hernandez, who went by the street name “Stoney Fly,” fired at two men smoking outside a Plaid Pantry in Southeast Portland on Dec. 16, 2015.
One of the men, Kyle Polk, 21, was killed.
The shooting, prosecutors said at trial, was an attempt to get back at rivals after a Hoover leader was shot and wounded in downtown Portland two days earlier.
Yet Polk was not a rival. He was on his way home from work and died almost immediately from a single gunshot to his upper abdomen at the front door of a Plaid Pantry convenience store at Southeast Division and 112th Avenue.
“He admitted his role in shooting the deadly shots that killed Kyle Polk, a young man who simply was waiting for a friend at the wrong place, at the wrong time,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Leah Bolstad wrote to the court. “Polk was not a threat to anyone. Yet he was murdered in cold blood.”
Hernandez, who was riding in a car driven by veteran gang member Ronald Clayton “Big Fly” Rhodes, said they both thought Polk was a rival, and Rhodes ordered him to shoot.
While Rhodes is anticipated to face a mandatory life sentence, Bolstad argued for a lower prison term of 17 years and six months for Hernandez.
U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane accepted the government’s recommendation but then shaved off one more year, after lawyers from each side cited Hernandez’ youth, childhood trauma and difficult upbringing without a father, lack of a serious criminal history, and 2019 fight against cancer.
Hernandez was one of the cooperating witnesses who testified against two veteran gang members, who were convicted at trial of a racketeering conspiracy and murder in aid of racketeering, which carries a mandatory life sentence. The veterans convicted at trial haven’t been sentenced yet.
“A big factor is he cooperated,” Bolstad told the judge.
“He did come forward, risk his life,” provide valuable information to investigators and testify in court, the prosecutor said.
Ludwig argued for a sentence of 11 years and four months, pointing out that Hernandez was only 19 when he shot Polk, did something “very brave in cooperating and testifying,” and has been remorseful.
Hernandez met privately with Polk’s parents in the courtroom before his sentencing with his lawyer, as well as a facilitator and deputy U.S. marshals standing guard. Polk’s parents, Reuben and Kathryn Polk, directly told Hernandez about their younger son, and Hernandez personally apologized to them in an emotional encounter, Ludwig said.
At sentencing, the prosecutor relayed to McShane the parents’ remarks as Reuben and Kathryn Polk sat in the first row of the courtroom’s public gallery.
Polk’s parents will never get over the loss of their youngest child, Bolstad said.
The Polks described their son as fun-loving and happy, kind and empathetic, loyal and dependable and a young man who had big plans for his future. Six months before his death he had obtained his associate degree with honors and wanted to continue his education to some day earn a doctorate degree in history. Kyle Polk’s older brother recently got married, but he was without his “best man.” Yet he honored his brother’s memory at his wedding by draping a suit jacket on a chair that held flowers.
Reuben and Kathryn Polk also recognize that teenage boys and young men sometimes make “bone-headed” mistakes, Bolstad relayed.
“Mr. and Mrs. Polk forgive you,” Bolstad said, turning to Hernandez in the courtroom.
“They forgive you. They hope this story is about redemption down the road.”
They hope the future choices that Hernandez makes after he emerges from prison honor their son, Bolstad told the court.
At the Hoover racketeering trial, Hernandez, 26, testified that he fired at two men who were smoking outside the Plaid Pantry from the front passenger seat of a white SUV driven by fellow Hoover Ronald Rhodes. He said Rhodes gave him the gun and told him to shoot.
Moments before he fired, Hernandez testified, Rhodes asked the two men, “Hey Groove, where you from?” One of the men answered that he was from Oakland and wasn’t tied to a gang, Hernandez said. The other man said he was “60s” and threw up his gang signs, Hernandez said.
Yet in Hernandez’s first sit-down with investigators and prosecutors, he said Rhodes fired the gun that killed Polk. Polk’s friend who was with him that day, Javonni Matthew, told police that the front passenger in the white SUV was the person who had questioned them and then fired.
After the shooting, Rhodes and Hernandez cleaned the gun and tossed it into the Columbia River, according to prosecutors and court testimony. They also returned the rental Suburban they were riding in at the time of the Polk’s killing and hid out in Salem, according to Hernandez’ trial testimony.
The Hoovers that day had been looking for rivals to harm in retaliation for the wounding four days earlier of one of the Portland Hoover founders, Leonard Ray Brightmon Jr., in downtown Portland. The Hoovers believed Rolling 60 Crips were responsible for the shooting, according to Hernandez’s testimony.
Police connected the shell casings from the homicide scene and linked them to a shooting two days earlier, on Dec. 14, 2015. Hernandez and Rhodes, according to cell phone tower evidence, were placed in the area of that prior shooting, prosecutors said. One man was injured in the shooting, but it’s unclear if Hernandez ever fired a shot then.
According to court records, Hernandez spent most of his childhood without his father, who was deported, according to Bolstad.
Hernandez testified that he had met Rhodes after he dropped out of Vancouver’s Evergreen High school a month before graduation in the wake of getting kicked off the football team for a fight.
He started to sell marijuana to get money “just to smoke.” One of his dealers introduced him to Rhodes and soon Hernandez was driving around Portland with Rhodes every day, dealing hard drugs, including cocaine, heroin, Ecstasy and “anything that I could get my hands on,” he testified.
He estimated the two made about $3,500 on a typical day selling drugs in Portland, profits that they split in half.
Hernandez was “jumped in” to the 107 Hoovers at age 19, a week before the Plaid Pantry killing, he testified. Rhodes, who went by “Big Fly” on the street, picked out Hernandez’s gang name, “Stoney Flyckoon,” making him part of the informal Hoover “Fly Family.”
— Maxine Bernstein
Email mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212
Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian
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