The party at 9807 Laneyvale Ave. in Pleasant Grove on Saturday evening started pleasantly enough. It was, after all, a celebration of the holy sacrament of baptism that had been performed earlier in the day. Then, Noel Lorenzo Hernandez crashed the party.
Hernandez, a 21-year-old Irving resident, hadn't technically been invited. It was a friends-and-family thing, but the the hostess works with his mother and suggested that she stop by. Little did she know that her coworker would bring her adult children, or that they would show up to the party already noticeably wasted.
Nor did they stop drinking after they arrived. At some point, the hostess' husband pulled her aside and complained that the mother, who was outside in the front, wasn't keeping an eye on her children, who were inside guzzling alcohol.
So, things were a bit tense by the time Hernandez, who had spent the evening taking pulls from a bottle of Crown Royal, began "trash guy talking," as the hostess later described it to police. He was also vomiting at this point, but he and his siblings ignored the pleas of his mother, and the rest of the party goers, to leave.
The situation finally boiled over around midnight. The host, his brother-in-law, and several others attacked Hernandez as he walked outside, wailing on him until he lost consciousness, though the relative influence of head trauma and alcohol on his condition is unclear. Paramedics were told he'd also been hit with a beer bottle.
Hernandez was taken to Baylor Hospital, where he was treated. The cops interviewed several people at the party but made no arrests. Their report doesn't say whether this was because they couldn't find the suspects, they lacked sufficient evidence, or they simply thought that, after crashing a baptismal party with a bottle of Crown Royal, Hernandez kind of had it coming.
