Husband charged with killing New Jersey teacher Luz Hernandez

The estranged husband of a Jersey City kindergarten teacher who was beaten, strangled and buried in a shallow grave has been charged with her murder, authorities said Wednesday.

Prosecutors had initially charged Cesar Santana, 36, of Jersey City, with desecrating/concealing human remains after US Marshals arrested him at a Miami motel two weeks ago.

But now the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office says Santana killed Luz Hernandez, a 33-year-old mother of three whose body was found by investigators on Feb. 7 near Central Avenue and Third Street in Kearny.

On Wednesday, prosecutors charged Santana with first-degree murder, as well as hindering, failing to dispose of human remains and tampering with evidence, according to a press release.

The prosecutor’s office is investigating the killing “as an act of domestic violence,” the release said. Hernandez died of blunt force trauma to the head and compressions to the neck, autopsy results released by the prosecutor said.

Santana’s alleged accomplice — Leiner Miranda Lopez, 26, of Jersey City — has been charged with desecrating/concealing human remains. But he remains on the run.

Santana is Hernandez’s estranged husband and also reportedly the father of her kids.

Hernandez’s job, BelovED Charter School, called the Jersey City Police and reported her as missing Feb. 6 when she never showed up for work.

Cops found a crime scene at Hernandez’s Van Horne Street home the next day when they showed up for a welfare check. They called in the county prosecutor, and Santana was fingered as a person of interest.

Investigators found out Santana and and Lopez had been stopped by cops for a traffic violation on Central Avenue in Kearny the day before Hernandez disappeared. Police impounded the unregistered car, which later turned up more evidence of the crime, prosecutors said.

Homicide investigators later found the shallow grave around Central Avenue and Third Street where Hernandez was buried.

Family members and colleagues remembered Hernandez as a wonderful mother and a kind, beautiful person who loved kids and her job.

A GoFundMe account said Hernandez was a native of the Dominican Republic. She moved to the US when she was five years old, it said.

Santana was extradited to New Jersey Tuesday night and processed early Wednesday, the prosecutor’s office said.

He was being held at the Hudson County Correctional Facility pending his first court appearance.

Anyone with information is urged to call the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office at 201-915-1345.