An autopsy physician took the stand at D4vd's preliminary hearing and walked a Los Angeles courtroom through the final moments of Celeste Rivas Hernandez’s life, describing wounds that left her bleeding for anywhere from minutes to potentially an hour.
On Friday (July 24), Dr. Grant Ho of the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner testified that the 14-year-old girl died from two sharp force injuries to her upper body. One wound struck her abdomen and penetrated her liver; a second hit her left chest and damaged her ribs.
Ho said it "would take minutes, at least" for someone to lose enough blood to die from those injuries, and acknowledged under questioning that the process "could have potentially taken an hour," though he declined to commit to that figure. A prosecution court filing asserts that Burke "stood by while she bled out."
Advanced decomposition complicated the autopsy significantly. Ho testified he could not pinpoint when Hernandez died, calling it "extremely difficult to tell" and saying she had been dead "at least weeks" before her body was found. When Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman asked whether death could have occurred four to five months earlier, Ho replied "potentially." Authorities believe she was killed in April 2025; her dismembered, decomposing remains were found in the trunk of a Tesla that September.
Prosecutors allege Burke was intimate with Hernandez when she was 13, and he was 18, then stabbed her after she threatened to expose their sexual history and, in their words, "crater his career," subsequently dismembering her body in his garage.
The murder charge carries special circumstance allegations of lying in wait, murder for financial gain, and killing a witness in a criminal investigation. D4vd could face the death penalty.
