A youth football coach was a “interested person” in which a 13-year-old Los Angeles boy was detained and charged with sexual assault in an unrelated incident.
Mario Edgardo Garcia Aquino coached football at Whitsell Park in North Hollywood on Wednesday and was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department on Wednesday. On the same day, LAPD detectives working with the FBI recovered the body of Oscar Omar Hernandez along the desolate Ventura County.
LAPD robbery homicide detectives arrested the arrest, which they said was related to a 2024 sexual assault involving another alleged victim.
Hernandez’s family reported that the teenager disappeared on Sunday, March 30 because he failed to return home from the man’s Lancaster residence.
The day before the reported disappearance, the teenager, who lived in Sun Valley, took a train to the Antelope Valley. When the boy’s brother tried to call him later that day, the coach answered the boy’s cell phone, saying that the boy was busy and could not speak. According to family and investigators, the boy’s father, Daniel Hernandez, then called the coach and insisted that he sent the teenager down.
The day after the report was reportedly missing, investigators began tracking the coach and the boy’s movements after leaving the San Fernando Valley.
Authorities also found that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigated Garcia Aquino last year.
Garcia Aquino was charged with assault and intent to rape when investigators searched the teenager last Wednesday, in connection with the February 22, 2024 incident, allegedly “using trust and confidence to commit the attack,” according to a criminal record in court. Garcia Aquino missed the arraignment held on Monday.
It is unclear why the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office did not charge him in advance.
Several sources involved in the law say they have no right to speak publicly about the case, saying Garcia Aquino is an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador.
According to multiple law enforcement officers, the subject of sexual assault on minors in 2022 is also not accused.
After the boy disappeared, investigators determined using data from cellular devices, cell phone towers and other tracking systems that the suspect visited the Oxnard area near McGrath State Beach and the Santa Clara River, according to law enforcement sources. A footstep search by LAPD investigators and FBI agents resulted in the boy’s body standing side by side with North Harbour Avenue north of West Gonzalez Road. Investigators did not specify a cause of death.
The boy’s family held a vigil on Thursday and found his body. “We have that guy at home,” his sister Alejandra told Ktla through an interpreter. “He even helped us find the Oscars.”
The boy’s mother, Gladys Bautista, wore a football jersey and said her son “don’t need to be treated like an animal. That’s my son,” she said in Spanish.
