Doused with acid and robbed at knifepoint, this Hilton Head mother of 6 now lives in fear

Yahoo

11-02-2025

Minutes before the attack that would change her life, Maria Hernandez, 46, drove through her bank's ATM on Hilton Head Island.
A trip and a task she had done countless times before.
The normal task was preceded by a normal day: driving her youngest daughter to school, cleaning up fallen leaves from the banana tree in her front yard, working her shift at a nearby restaurant, cooking dinner for her kids, attending a church service and shopping at Walmart for Christmas gifts.
She had no way of knowing that a day so normal could end in tragedy.
As Maria left the bank parking lot the night of Dec. 20, two masked robbers threatened to stab her, they assaulted her with punch to side of her head and in an act of unexpected brutality, doused her in a solution that caused lasting burns on her chest, shoulder and arm — all to steal her purse and a stack of Christmas gifts from the car.
Police say they do not have any suspects. Evidence that could crack the case appears to be sparse.
That uncertainty has left Maria and her children in a state of fear. She longs for a sense of closure from the sudden and traumatic attack, all the while worrying the suspects could target another unsuspecting victim.
A little more than a month after the attack, Maria, short in stature and soft in speech, opens her front door. A narrow dirt road leads to the entrance of the mobile home, where a black cat patrols the front entrance as chickens cluck out of sight behind the house.
Inside, a dining room table is occupied by one of her six children, her second youngest, who sits eating dinner. The kitchen where Maria spends her free time baking bread is next to a sliding back door. It leads to the backyard where Maria grows tomatoes and chili peppers to cook her son's favorite meal: mole, a rich sauce she serves over rice.
Afternoon light floods into the living room. A Christmas tree dotted with silver and blue bows still stands tall in the corner, even in the final days of January. Turquoise walls surround a twin-sized bed, a leather loveseat and two identical chairs with brown slip covers.
Maria sits in one of them. It is the same chair she has used to block her front door in the nights following her attack, she says. Her voice breaks when she talks about trying to explain this to her youngest child, a 10-year-old daughter. It isn't just her that has been affected by this, she says; it is her entire family.
Another son, her 16-year-old, sits next to her in the identical brown chair. As Maria speaks, he relays her story back in English.
So she starts from the beginning, before she was attacked.
Maria moved to Hilton Head nearly 20 years ago from California, where she spent a few years working on farms. She is originally from Mexico.
She describes herself as kind and loving, with the ability to get angry when she needs to. When she says this, she cracks a short-lived smile. She has family in Bluffton and Ridgeland. She works in a restaurant on Hilton Head as a prep cook.
Her dark eyes move across the room, not settling on anything in particular. Exhaustion has fallen across her face: the result of sleepless nights from consistent nightmares, she says. Bruising on her left temple remains from when she was punched by one of her attackers. Her black hair, swept to a side part, has thinned out from anxiously pulling at it, she says.
An off-the-shoulder shirt reveals the left side of her upper body. It is where she was burned from liquid that was thrown on her in the midst of the attack. Pink and red scarring spans the length of her upper arm and chest. She used the arm to block her face from the liquid, she says.
Her legs, crossed at the ankle, were also scarred — the physical result of two skin graft surgeries she underwent in recent weeks.
No me gusta ver, she said. She doesn't like to look at it.
And even weeks later, she is still in constant pain, day in and day out. The medication does not calm her down, and it makes her feel dizzy. With patience and time, it will heal, she says. But there is no escape from what happened, and questions remain about who did this to her, and if justice will be served.
It was close to 10 p.m. on Dec. 20 as Maria pulled into the Bank of America ATM on north-end Hilton Head, minutes away from the main entrances to Hilton Head Plantation and Indigo Run. She withdrew a few hundred dollars, placed the bills in her glove compartment and began her exit of the parking lot, stopping at the stop sign at the intersection of Hatton Place and Pembroke Drive.
That's when she heard a golpe recio — a big bump — followed by the sight of a dark figure near the hood of her car.
At first, she thought she had hit someone, Maria said. She immediately dialed 911 and put the car in park.
But with the parking brake activated, Maria's car doors automatically unlocked. The door flung open, and one dark figure put a knife to her side.
Immediately scared for her life, Maria dropped her phone. With police dispatch still on the line, it fell between the driver's seat and the car's center console.
The masked figures told Maria to slowly move the car to the side of the road. As she slowly rolled down Hatton Place, she began to scream. In response, one of the men punched her in the face, leaving a bruise that remained visible in early February.
She then saw one of the men lift a container, Maria said. In a split-second decision that might have saved her life, she threw her left arm over her face.
The caustic chemical spilled onto her left arm and poured over her shoulder, sending shockwaves of burning pain across Maria's upper body.
When she looked to her right, she saw the other masked figure rifling through her possessions in the passenger's side.
Maria knew she'd have to do something. She pushed the man in front of her and she ran into a wooded area nearby, narrowly avoiding the masked figure's attempts to grab her arm and trip her.
From the woods, Maria saw the two men run away. She tried to wave down two cars that passed by shortly after, but each driver rolled by without offering help.
She rushed back to the car, fished her phone from the floorboard and called her sister.
'I called (her) to tell her that I'm going to die,' Maria said, 'because I could no longer bear the pain.'
Suddenly, the parking lot was flooded with the headlights of a police cruiser. A deputy exited and pointed a flashlight at Maria, illuminating the screaming red burns that covered her upper body.
'I remember taking off my clothes because of the pain and looking at the burns,' said Maria, going on to say she entered a state of shock. 'After that, I couldn't feel my arm. I don't remember people helping me, when the police came or when I was riding in the ambulance.'
She was rushed to the emergency room at Hilton Head Hospital, where her wounds were treated with cold water. But seeing the extent of Maria's injuries, medical staff knew she would need to be airlifted to a burn center.
Maria spent a month at Charleston's Medical University of South Carolina, undergoing two surgeries and receiving countless visitors. Most were family members and friends, but some were strangers who heard about Maria's story and wanted to show their support.
The medical bills from Maria's hospital stay would be covered by a victim's assistance fund, she said. She was unable to work while the burns healed, but her family would receive financial assistance from a fundraiser organized by Bluffton couple Nadia Ramirez-Gray and Roger Gray.
As of February, neither of the two suspects had been apprehended. In a late January meeting, sheriff's office personnel told Maria and her family that the attack was still under investigation but had yielded few developments.
Robberies targeting people leaving ATMs and other financial institutions are part of a relatively new crime phenomenon across the country, informally known as 'bank jugging.' Police say perpetrators aim to victimize people carrying large amounts of cash, and that the crimes seem to increase during tax season.
The thieves that targeted Maria didn't get the money she had withdrawn from the ATM.
There are no known witnesses to the Dec. 20 attack, according to Master Sgt. Danny Allen, a spokesperson for the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office. It is unlikely that local surveillance footage captured the robbery or a discernible view of the suspects.
Police were in possession of the jacket Maria wore during the incident and had taken a number of DNA samples from the scene, she said, but she hadn't been told what chemical was poured on her.
Asked if she had hope for the perpetrators' arrest, Maria said, 'I think so. I hope they do find them.'
She expressed a resigned sadness that the two passing cars hadn't stopped in her moment of need or dialed 911 on her behalf, saying they could have information on the fleeing suspects.
'I told the police to keep investigating, because it can't just end like this,' Maria said with tears in her eyes. 'Because if someone did this to me, they could still be out there and do this to another person.'