A youth soccer coach in California has been charged with murder in the death of a 13-year-old boy and with sexually assaulting another teenager, and authorities urged anyone else who may have been victimized to come forward.
Oscar Omar Hernandez, 13, was reported missing late last month when he didn’t come home after having visited his soccer coach in Lancaster, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said Monday at a news conference. The boy’s mother, father and sister stood beside authorities as they announced the murder charge against the coach.
The coach, Mario Edgardo Garcia-Aquino, 43, was charged with one count of murder with special circumstances “during the commission or attempted commission of lewd acts with a child,” the district attorney’s office said in a statement.
Garcia-Aquino has also been charged in a separate case with a felony count of assault with intent to commit a lewd act in connection with an incident involving a 16-year-old boy in February 2024, Hochman said. Garcia-Aquino could face the death penalty or life without the possibility of parole on the murder charge and six years in prison on the felony sexual assault charge.
His arraignment was postponed Tuesday, and a new date has been set for the end of the month.
In an amended complaint against Garcia-Aquino obtained by NBC News, the district attorney’s office details the murder charge, as well as two other charges involving another child, a 14-year-old boy. The complaint said Garcia-Aquino was charged with felony assault with intent to commit rape, as well as a charge of lewd act upon a child age 14 or 15, also a felony, in connection with the incident that occurred in December 2022.
Oscar's body was found Wednesday, several days after his family reported him missing, on the side of a road in Oxnard, Hochman said Monday.
“You have our deepest sympathy for a loss that words cannot even begin to describe,” Hochman said, addressing the family. “Our role though is to bring justice to this family and to hold the person responsible for these brutal, heinous, unspeakable, unthinkable acts — hold them accountable and prosecute and punish them to the full extent of the law.”
Authorities asked any additional victims or people with information about the case to come forward, saying they would not be asked about their immigration status.
“It’s very important that we bring justice, not only to the family here to my left, but any families that may have been victimized by this,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said Monday.
While authorities said they could not reveal the full details of their investigation, Luna said Garcia-Aquino was from the Palmdale area and was a youth soccer coach in the Hurricane Valley boys soccer club in the Sylmar area.
Friends of Oscar told NBC Los Angeles that he was a friendly child who loved soccer and whose presence lit up those around him.
“When he would walk into the room ... it would just brighten the entire room, which was the best part because if someone was down, he would just make your day,” Valentina Reese, a friend, told NBC Los Angeles.
Christopher Arldana said: “He would make you laugh. We all play soccer together. He would just goof around in practice, and he would just make everyone laugh.”
