'Every mother hopes for this:' Suspect arrested in connection to 2021 Christmas Day murder

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — After losing her son last Christmas Day, Hilda Aguilar said the holidays will never be the same.

"It was a very hard blow for me, I almost went crazy honestly," Aguilar said.

Early in the morning on Christmas Day last year, Metro Police said 22-year-old Edil Hernandezwas driving his Chevy Camaro near the 4500 block of Nolensville Pike when a Toyota Tacoma pick up truck and a second vehicle pulled up and fired shots towards Hernandez. A bullet hit him in the head and killed him.

"It hurts me because he was a very good son and he helped me a lot with his siblings," Aguilar said.

She said she doesn't know why her son was a target. Police said a relative of Hernandez was involved in an argument at the San Jose Fiesta Restaurant on Wallace Road earlier that night, but left before Hernandez arrived. Witnesses told police Hernandez was followed after leaving the restaurant.

Aguilar said this week she felt some relief after learning police arrested, 25 year-old Darwin Perez-Castellanos, one of the suspects in her son's murder.

Castellanos was detained in Texas by border patrol agents when attempting to enter the U.S before realizing he was wanted for murder in Nashville.

"Every mother hopes for this, for justice to be served. Because my son wasn't just anybody. He didn't deserve what they did to him," Aguilar said.

It's a day she began to lose hope would come back in February, when police told her the suspects in Edil's murder had fled to Honduras.

"I felt bad, but I just asked God that he take care of it, that justice be done," Aguilar said.

Now, she said she'll keep praying, to see everyone involved in her son's murder face legal justice.

Quotes in this article have been translated from Spanish.