Lost Security Footage Helps Police Solve College Student's 2020 Disappearance from LA Dispensary

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a college student disappeared from his place of work. For investigators in Los Angeles County, manipulated security footage might have held the clues as to who killed. Juan Hernandez and who made him disappear.

His mother, Yajaira Hernandez, spoke with Buried in the Backyard — airing Saturdays at 8/7c on Oxygen — about life as a mom to three sons. The family of four lived together and shared a love of running marathons, bonding as a family "connected."

I love all my three kids, and we all have a great bond, but the bond that Juan and I had was different," said the mother. "He was always closer to me.

Who was Juan Hernandez?

Juan Hernandez, 21, was the middle son of Yajaira Hernandez, a young man with "hopes and dreams" of becoming an electrical engineer one day after completing his courses at El Camino College in Los Angeles County. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, the beloved son found work at a local marijuana dispensary, working the 3:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. shift just 20 minutes from home, according to his mother.

It wasn't an ideal job; I wasn't the happiest of moms, but he had to work," she said. "He was trying to save up for school, so all I could do was support him.

Yajaira Hernandez last saw Juan Hernandez around 2:00 p.m. on September 22, 2020, as he was getting ready to go to work, taking his mother's car to get there. He texted "I'll see you soon" at 10:00 p.m., as he usually did after work, although the mother fell asleep shortly after.

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The next morning, there was no sign of the college student.

I think the world stopped for me in that moment," said the grieving mother. "He'd never not come home, never leave me stranded. We share locations on our cell phones; his location is off. This is not normal.

When authorities told Yajaira Hernandez she had to wait 72 hours to file an official missing persons report, the mother started taking action to conduct her own investigation.

A mother's search for Juan Hernandez

Juan Hernandez.

Photo: Oxygen

Yajaira Hernandez visited the dispensary and found a security guard who knew the shop's manager, later identified as Ethan Astaphan, though at that time only known as "E." Through the guard, the mother got Astaphan on the phone, and she requested access to the security cameras throughout the business.

Astaphan told her they were live feed only and, therefore, would be of no use in her ongoing search for her son.

Yajaira Hernandez took her case to social media, resulting in thousands of shares and, most importantly, attention from the LAPD, namely Detectives Daniel Jaramillo and Jennifer Hammer.

Reports of Juan Hernandez's captivity

In the days following Juan Hernandez's disappearance, Yajaira Hernandez received ransom notes by text from multiple numbers. The alleged kidnappers demanded $7,000 in exchange for Juan Hernandez's safe return.

Detectives Jaramillo and Hammer recognized "a potential that his life could be in danger," prompting them to obtain warrants to search Juan Hernandez's phone, bank, and social media records.

As digital investigations continued into the possible ransom, Det. Hammer told Buried in the Backyard that it was "concerning and suspicious" that Juan Hernandez's phone was turned off near the dispensary soon after his last shift ended. Days later, their most prominent lead came when Yajaira Hernandez's missing vehicle popped up out of the blue.

Ms. Hernandez's car was found two to three miles from the dispensary, and that area, where it was located, is a very high crime, prostitution, gang area," said Jaramillo. "It's a rougher part of town.

But searches of the car yielded nothing, and the same was true for the alleged ransom notes to Yajaira Hernandez's phone. Police said digital records proved the messages were part of an elaborate extortion scheme, in which scammers from other continents obtained her phone number from missing poster ads and tried to take the panicked mother's money.

Yajaira Hernandez was no closer to finding her son.

On Sept. 29, 2020, authorities used a search warrant to investigate the dispensary. They collected the security footage, which, contrary to what Astaphan claimed to Yajaira Hernandez, was not at all live-feed only.

There's no video before September 22nd; it starts on the 23rd," Hammer said. "Obviously, that's suspicious. Why is there no video before the 22nd?

Surveillance footage offers new clues

On the morning of Sept. 23, security footage showed three people cleaning the shop's floor, two of whom were identified by the security guard as Astaphan and dispensary owner Weijia "James" Peng.

The third person was later identified as Peng's girlfriend, Sonita Heng.

But by then, Peng had flown from LAX airport to Turkey, and detectives had to build their case. They enlisted the help of the Glendale Police Department’s crime lab, since they had the technology to recover the lost surveillance footage.

"There were over one million files that were recovered, but only one to two frames from one clip captured on September 22, when Juan went missing, just less than a second of movement," crime lab detective Juan Giraldo told. Buried in the Backyard .

According to Giraldo, the camera pointing to the dispensary's display case showed someone resembling Juan Hernandez "being taken down to the ground" by two individuals, soon after the missing man's shift ended. He said he felt "confident" the clip had been purposefully deleted from the security system.

But there was no way of knowing whether Juan Hernandez was dead in the video.

"While Ethan Astaphan is choking Juan Hernandez, you see James Peng lean down, and there's something weird in his hand," said Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Ethan Milius.

Investigators theorized it could have been a cell phone.

Detectives investigate Astaphan, Peng, and Heng

Ethan Astaphan and James Peng.

Photo: Oxygen

In October 2020, detectives executed search warrants for phones belonging to Ethan Astaphan, James Peng, and Sonita Heng. The results returned the following month painted a clear picture of their movements on the night of Juan Hernandez's disappearance.

Records showed them heading to the Mojave Desert, where the odds of narrowing down a location within a 10-mile radius were "minimal to zero," Det. Jaramillo said.

Searches in the vast desert began on November 13, 2020, focusing on a grid between two cell phone towers. The search widened the next day, comprising dozens of investigators, ATVs, and helicopter crews. Search and rescue dogs from San Bernardino County helped home in on the nearly skeletal remains of Juan Hernandez, close to a fallen barbed wire fence and partially buried in the sand.

Two months had passed since Juan Hernandez disappeared, and animals had gotten to the decomposed remains.

It destroyed us," said the victim's mother. "As individuals, and it destroyed us as a family.

Detectives make arrests

On Nov. 19, 2020, following the discovery of Juan Hernandez's body, investigators secured arrest warrants for Astaphan and Heng. James Peng, however, was still in Turkey.

According to Prosecutor Habib Balian, a search through Astaphan's phone messages offered "a glimpse into the plan that he and James Peng had been formulating."

"In their minds, they believed that Juan was stealing from them," Balian told Buried in the Backyard .

However, the police said there was no evidence to support that any theft had taken place.

On December 16, 2020, Sonita Heng - through her attorney - requested a meeting with detectives, agreeing to talk in exchange for a lighter conviction. In a recorded interview obtained by Buried in the Backyard , Heng tearfully said she feared for her life, which was why she went along with the men's devious plans.

Heng told detectives that Peng - her boyfriend - used a syringe to inject Hernandez with ketamine, which explained the unknown object seen in the suspect's hand during the Sept. 22 attack.

She said Peng injected more after Hernandez had died during the two-and-a-half-hour drive to the desert.

He injected [it] into Juan's eyeball," Heng cried on tape. "Ethan was making fun of it. He said, 'I was trying to inject it into his eyeball to see if his eyeball changed.'

When Hernandez was found in the desert, a San Bernardino County coroner was unable to determine the cause of death. However, with Heng's information, a reexamination confirmed the presence of ketamine in Hernandez's toxicology, a drug for which testing had not been conducted initially.

The report was later amended to show Hernandez died from both strangulation and ketamine toxicity, according to Hammer.

Authorities believed Peng was still in Turkey, waiting for the right time to enter China. It would take two years to arrest and extradite him to the United States to face a judge, with the help of Turkish authorities and the U.S. Marshals.

The murder trial of Astaphan and Peng

The trial began on February 9, 2024, when the court heard about the men killing Hernandez, and Heng helping them try to cover up their crimes.

Ethan got into Juan's car and he left it in a high-prostitution area," Det. Hammer said. "The next day, they took Juan's belongings, went to Newport Beach, and they burned Juan's items.

It took a jury only a few hours to find Astaphan and Peng guilty of first-degree murder.

Astaphan is currently serving a 25-to-life sentence; Peng is currently serving a 26-to-life sentence, according to prison records reviewed by Oxygen.com .

For her testimony and cooperation, Sonita Heng was sentenced to probation and spent 112 days in jail.

We remember Juan being kind and always being there for his loved ones," said Yajaira Hernandez. "We honor his life by trying to be better because [these] individuals took his body. But his spirit, and his love, all of that remains in my heart.

Don't miss all-new episodes of Buried in the Backyard airing Saturdays at 8/7c on Oxygen.

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Nicotine pouch poisonings are exploding among young children

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Young children are being poisoned by nicotine at an alarming rate, and a new study Published this week shows that nicotine pouches, not vapes, are the latest concern.

This new study found that nicotine pouch ingestions increased by more than 760% from 2020 to 2023 in children ages six and younger. When compared to other nicotine products, pouches are about two times more likely to lead to hospitalization.

Popular brands like ZYN offer a variety of nicotine pouch flavors, and unlike cigarettes and vapes, there's no smoke. However, it's not the same as chewing tobacco; there's no need to spit.

It's a powder that dissolves in the user's mouth, tucked between their lip and gum, allowing nicotine to be absorbed into their bloodstream.

All of that makes it harder for parents to notice and easier for kids to go unnoticed.

"One of our biggest concerns is, of course, young children getting into them," said Maureen Roland, director of Banner Poison & Drug Information Center .

Roland said the number of calls they have received this year regarding nicotine pouch poisonings in children has doubled.

"So, we've already reached the same number of exposures that we had last year and we're only halfway through the year," said Roland.

According to the CDC, nicotine pouches First entered the U.S. market in 2016, and since then, demand has skyrocketed to more than 800 million sales annually. The makers of ZYN tell Arizona’s Family that their product has been sold in the U.S. since 2014.

A national survey in 2024 found that nicotine pouches are the second most commonly used tobacco product among teens, behind e-cigs.

We've seen this throughout history when we have these newer products coming out, but it's still very dangerous," said Roland. "It is highly toxic, especially when ingested and it doesn't take too much. It can be fatal.

Researchers analyzed more than a decade of data for this study, and two kids died from nicotine poisoning, although those deaths were attributed to ingesting liquid nicotine.

A spokesperson for ZYN gave the following statement to Arizona’s Family:

The latest data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control show that youth use remains low . ZYN is the only nicotine pouch authorized approved by the FDA as appropriate to protect public health. In reaching that conclusion, the agency noted that ZYN's packaging is designed to be child-resistant. We welcome the opportunity to meet with these researchers and educate them on the strong measures Swedish Match takes to prevent underage use.

Locally, the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center says the number of hospital admissions was seven children between 2019-2022. It increased to 45 children between 2022-2025.

Roland said it's important to keep these products away from children and not let them see you use them because they often imitate behaviors.

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Rosen, Cortez Masto introduce bill for veterans exposed to toxins in Nevada

WASHINGTON DC (KOLO) - U.S. Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen have introduced a bill seeking to support veterans exposed to radiation and toxins while serving in Nevada.

The bill would apply to servicemembers who served at classified locations within the Nevada Test and Training Range since 1951.

Rosen says that between the 1950s and the 1990s, the NTTR hosted more than 900 nuclear weapons tests, as well as other dangerous toxic activities.

Due to the classified nature of the areas these veterans served in, affected veterans are unable to prove service to the VA, and are therefore unable to receive care and benefits connected to exposure to radiation and toxins from burn pits.

The FORGOTTEN Veterans Act would recognize these veterans and would:

• Classify the Nevada Test and Training Range as contaminated.
• Require the Department of Defense (DOD) to document all exposures, including those that occur domestically, into the servicemember's Individual Longitudinal Exposure Record, so it can be seen by the VA when servicemembers transition to civilian life, while still protecting the classified nature of the location of their service.
• Require the Secretary of the Air Force to identify all those who served within the NTTR since January 27, 1951, establish a process for servicemembers and veterans to provide proof of their assignment within the NTTR, and make all efforts to identify individuals, without requiring them to submit evidence of their stationing.
• Establish a presumption of toxic exposure for DOD personnel who served at any Department of Energy (DOE) Covered Facilities – such as those within the NTTR – where DOE employees have a presumption of exposure and are covered under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act . One such DOE-covered facility within the NTTR is the Tonopah Test Range, which is both a DOE and DOD installation.
• Add service at military installations within the NTTR to the list of recognized "radiation-risk activities" under VA law, dating back to January 27, 1951, including veterans who participated in the development, construction, operation, or maintenance of military installations at NTTR—beyond just nuclear test observers.
• Establish a presumption of toxic exposure for veterans who served on or above NTTR, reducing the burden of proof in VA claims.
• Expand presumptive conditions for service connection by adding lipomas and tumor-related conditions to the list of automatically presumed service-connected illnesses.

Veterans have been exposed to radiation and toxic chemicals as a result of their selfless service to our nation, and the least we can do is ensure they get the treatment they need," said Senator Rosen. "I'm introducing this bill to recognize the radiation and toxic exposure experienced at the Nevada Test and Training Range so our veterans can access the care and benefits they deserve. It is unconscionable that one U.S. government agency deems portions of the range as contaminated and their personnel exposed, while another U.S. government agency does not. I'll continue working to make sure we take care of our veterans and their loved ones.

As a nation, it is our obligation to take care of all veterans once their service has ended," said Senator Cortez Masto. "This is especially true for veterans of the Nevada Test and Training Range, who faced toxic exposure daily as part of their duties and should have parity with their civilian counterparts. I will continue to push for these brave men and women to receive the care and benefits they're due.

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I looked into the eyes of a man who blew himself up on the Tube. I still see him everywhere.

Two decades have passed since the 2005 London attacks, but the face of the lead suicide bomber, Mohammad Sidique Khan, has never left Dan Biddle's memory.

It feels as real today as the day they looked into each other's eyes.

"I can be in the kitchen and he is standing in the garden," says Dan, who has complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

He's there, dressed as he was on that day, holding the rucksack, just with his hand above it, about to detonate it again.

Even if Dan looks away, the bomber is still there when he looks back.

"I saw this guy literally disassemble himself in front of me, and now I'm seeing him again."

Warning: This article contains details some readers may find distressing

• 7 July London bombings: What happened that day?

Dan was in close proximity to Khan, on a rush-hour London Underground Circle line train on 7 July 2005. How he survived is almost beyond rational explanation.

As we pulled out of Edgware Road station, I could feel somebody staring at me. I was just about to turn around and say, 'What are you looking at?', when I saw him put his hand in the bag.

And then there was just a brilliant white, bright flash—heat like I've never experienced before.

Khan had detonated a homemade bomb—made using an al-Qaeda-devised chemical recipe—that he was carrying in his rucksack.

The device killed David Foulkes, 22, Jennifer Nicholson, 24, Laura Webb, 29, Jonathan Downey, 34, Colin Morley and Michael Brewster, both 52.

In total, 52 people were killed that day , caused by four bombs detonated by Islamist extremists. Another 770 were injured.

Dan was blown out of the train, hit the tunnel wall, and fell into the crawl space between the tunnel wall and the track.

His injuries were catastrophic. His left leg was blown off. His right leg was severed from the knee down. He suffered second and third-degree burns to his arms, hands, and face. He lost his left eye—and his hearing on that side too.

He suffered a massive laceration to his forehead. A pole from the tube train's internal fittings penetrated his body, causing punctures and ruptures to his kidneys, lungs, colon, and bowel. He later lost his spleen.

Dan was the most severely injured victim of the attacks to survive. And he was conscious throughout.

He initially thought the white flash was an electrical explosion.

Debris had fallen onto him, and his arms and hands were on fire. He could see the flames flickering.

Right after the explosion, you could have heard a pin drop. It was almost as if everybody had just taken a big breath," Dan says, "and then it was like opening the gates of hell. Screaming like I've never heard before.

Dan could see some of the dead. He tried to push down to lever himself up from the debris. He realised how profusely he was bleeding.

"The initial feeling was one of total disbelief. It was like, surely God, this is just a nightmare."

Dan's mind immediately turned to his father, and how he couldn't bear for him to witness this.

My dad cannot be the person that walks into a mortuary and says, 'Yeah, that's my son'," Dan says. "I couldn't bear the thought of that.

He didn't believe he would get out of the tunnel. But the will to survive instinctively kicked in and he screamed for help.

The first person to respond was fellow passenger Adrian Heili, who had served as a combat medic during the Kosovo war. If it had been anyone else, Dan believes he would have died.

The first thing he said to me was, 'Don't worry, I've been in this situation before, and never lost anyone.'

And I'm thinking, 'How can you have gone through this before?'

"And then he said to me: 'I'm not going to lie to you. This is really going to hurt.'"

Adrian applied a tourniquet and clamped the artery in Dan's thigh to prevent him from bleeding to death. Dan's life was literally in Adrian's hands until paramedics arrived approximately half an hour later.

Adrian helped many more in the hours that followed—and in 2009 received the Queen's Commendation for Bravery.

Dan's trauma was far from over. He was taken to nearby St Mary's Hospital where he repeatedly went into cardiac arrest. At one point, a surgeon had to manually massage his heart to bring him back to life. He was given 87 units of blood.

I think there's something in all of us - that fundamental desire to live.

Very few people ever get pushed to the degree where that's required.

"My survival is down to Adrian and the phenomenal care and just brilliance of the NHS and my wife."

Physical survival was one thing. But the toll on Dan's mental health was another.

After eight weeks in an induced coma, Dan began a year-long journey toward leaving the hospital—and he realized he would have to navigate the world outside differently.

His nights became consumed with mental torture.

He dreaded having to close his eyes and go to sleep because he would find himself back in the tunnel.

I wake up and [the bomber] is standing next to me," Dan says. "I'll be driving—he's in the back seat of my car. I'll look in the shop window and there's a reflection of him—on the other side of the street.

Those flashbacks have led to what Dan describes as survivor's guilt.

"I've replayed that moment a million times over in my head. Was there something about me that made him do it? Should I have seen something about him then tried to stop it?"

By 2013 Dan had reached a dangerous low. He tried to take his own life three times.

But he had also started a relationship with his now-wife Gem—and this was a crucial turning point.

The next time he came close to suicide, it was Gem's face he saw when he closed his eyes, and he realized that if he ended his own life, he would inflict appalling trauma on her.

Gem persuaded Dan to take a mental health assessment—and he began to get the expert help he needed.

In 2014 he agreed—together with his therapy and attempts to manage the condition—to do something he thought he would never do: return to Edgware Road.

When the day came, Dan sat outside the station experiencing flashbacks and hearing the sounds of 7/7 again: screams, shouting, and sirens.

He and Gem pressed on. As they entered the ticket hall, there were more flashbacks.

The station manager and staff were expecting him and asked if he wanted to go down to the platform. Dan said it was a "bridge too far". Gem insisted they all go together.

When they reached the platform, a train pulled in. Dan began to feel sick. But the train quietly moved on without incident—and by the time a third train had arrived, he found the courage to board it.

I feel really, really sick. I'm sweating. She's crying. I'm tensing, waiting for a blast. I'm waiting for that big heat and that pressure to hit me.

And then the train stopped at the point in the tunnel where the bomb had gone off—an arrangement between the driver and the station manager.

They had stopped the train exactly where I had been lying. I remember looking down at the floor, and it was a really weird feeling—knowing that my life had really come to an end there.

As the train pulled away, something inside Dan urged him to get off at the next station and move forward with his life.

"I'm going to leave the station, I'm going to do whatever I'm going to do today, and then I'm going to marry this amazing, beautiful woman," he says. The two tied the knot the following year.

Eleven years later, Dan feels compelled to do something positive with his life.

He now runs his own company helping disabled people find employment—a professional journey he might never have undertaken had it not been for the bomb.

He still has flashbacks and bad days, but he's finding ways to manage them—and has published a book about what he has been through.

I'm very lucky to still be alive. I've paid an immense, enormous price. I'll just keep fighting every day to make sure that he and his actions never win.

A list of organizations in the UK offering support and information regarding some of the issues in this story is available at newsrealtime Action Line

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Swiss village's loss in rockslide highlights Alpine disaster preparedness in Kandersteg

By Marleen Kaesebier and Cecile Mantovani

KANDERSTEG, Switzerland (newsrealtime) - In the Swiss Alpine resort of Kandersteg, officials have been closely monitoring a deteriorating mountain peak that towers above its picturesque homes and hotels, after a glacier collapse and massive rockslide buried a neighbouring village last month.

The destruction in late May of Blatten, a village of around 300 people in the Loetschental valley, threw into sharp relief concern about the impact of melting permafrost as temperatures trend higher on Alpine mountain ranges.

Blatten was evacuated before a chunk of a glacier broke off, triggering a dangerous cascade of ice, earth and rock towards the village, in a manner similar to what Kandersteg has been preparing for.

"Of course, Blatten really upset us," said Kandersteg's mayor Rene Maeder. "It really gets under your skin. You're speechless when you see those images of the violence of nature."

Still, Maeder was confident Kandersteg's dams and daily monitoring prepared it well to avert disaster, with researchers checking the mountain via GPS, radar and drone.

There has been an increased risk of rockslides in Kandersteg since 2018, when paragliders observed that Spitzer Stein, a prominent rocky peak atop a lush Alpine landscape, was losing height and had pieces breaking off.

That discovery made the village a testing ground for technology that monitors what some experts believe is the likely impact of climate change on the Alps, where thawing permafrost has weakened rock structures that were long frozen solid.

Seismic activity and geological instability are also risks for the region's mountains.

THAWING PERMAFROST

Kandersteg was a prime example of an area with historical structural instability that could be aggravated by many factors, including permafrost, said Robert Kenner at the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research in Davos.

"What calmed down for about 3,000 years is now reactivated," he said.

Sensors monitoring GPS locations on the Spitzer Stein showed the mountain shifting by up to 70 centimetres (2.3 feet) a day, Maeder said.

In the event of major rock movement, residents should receive warnings at least 48 hours in advance.

Blatten was evacuated 10 days before the deluge, which caused insurance losses of 320 million Swiss francs ($400 million), an initial estimate by the Swiss insurance association showed.

There are approximately 48 Swiss Alpine peaks that are at least 4,000 meters (13,123 feet) in height, and several hundred that reach at least 3,000 meters.

In 2017, a landslide killed eight hikers in the southern village of Bondo, despite prior evacuations. Monitoring there has since been ramped up.

'TIP OF THE ICEBERG'

Kandersteg, with a population of about 1,400, has spent over 11 million Swiss francs ($13.81 million) on disaster preparedness, including dams to slow flooding, Mayor Maeder said.

Residents, who receive regular updates on the mountain's movements via email and WhatsApp, have confidence in the technology.

"We still sleep well," said Patrick Jost, head of Kandersteg's tourism office, whose home is one of the most exposed to a potential collapse of the Spitzer Stein.

He lives with his two children in the red zone, the village's most high-risk area, where no new construction is allowed.

Despite the shock of Blatten, life is largely unchanged, including vital tourism, locals say.

Kandersteg will perform its first ever full evacuation drill next year, Maeder said, observing: "Blatten and Kandersteg, that's just the tip of the iceberg."

Residents like 77-year-old Rudi Schorer know they will have to move quickly in an emergency and have set aside identification documents, spare clothes, and a few personal belongings.

"These are ready in a suitcase at home," Schorer said. "That's what we were advised to do, and that's what we did."

(1 dollar = 0.7996 Swiss francs)

(Additional reporting by Emma Farge and Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva; Editing by Dave Graham and Bernadette Baum)

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