Youth soccer coach accused of sexually assaulting boys and murdering his personal participant
Mario Edgardo Garcia-Aquino, 44, who is facing a possible death penalty, has been hit with nine new charges after allegedly killing a teenager who went to his house to help make football shirts
Youth football coach Mario Edgardo Garcia-Aquino was charged with the murder of one of his players(Image: Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department)
A youth football coach facing a possible death penalty after being charged with sexually assaulting and killing one of his teenage players last year his been hit with nine additional counts of sex abuse against a minor.
Mario Edgardo Garcia-Aquino, 44, allegedly invited a 13-year-old boy round his house to help him make football shirts before murdering him and dumping his body in March 2025. Oscar Omar Hernandez was discovered dead in a roadside ditch in Ventura County, southern California after going missing for several days.
Garcia-Aquino faces a possible maximum sentence of death or life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office will make decision on whether to seek the death penalty at a later date.
Hernandez’s family said Garcia-Aquino owned the Huracan Valley Boys Soccer Club in Sylmar and invited the teenage boy to his home in Lancaster.
“His soccer coach made soccer jerseys,” older sister Alejandra Hernandez said in Spanish. “He had taken other soccer teammates to help him, and that’s why my brother went.” The teen died of alcohol poisoning, according to coroner’s office records.
More allegations against Garcia-Aquino began to surface after Hernandez’s death. LA County Sheriff Robert Luna said that in 2024, Garcia-Aquino “befriended a Sylmar family” through the soccer program. They allowed their juvenile son to spend the night at his home in Palmdale.
“The family subsequently filed a criminal report with the Palmdale Sheriff’s Station alleging sexual abuse of their child,” Luna said.
Garcia-Aquino was charged with murder and also assaulting another boy aged 14 or 15 but the investigations into the soccer coach did not end there.
Now the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office have filed nine new charges, all related to child sexual abuse that happened between September 2022 and July 2023. It is understood the victim was another young footballer. Garcia-Aquino is now charged with eight counts of sodomy with a minor under the age of 16 and one count of oral copulation with a minor.
The district attorney’s office had come under pressure for its handling of a previous investigation into the coach. It is understood the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department asked prosecutors to charge Garcia-Aquino with sexually assaulting one of his players nearly a year before Omar was killed.
Prosecutors didn’t seek a warrant to arrest Garcia-Aquino in that case until about a week before Omar’s death. LA County Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson revealed the victim in all nine new counts charged was the same boy whose rape allegations the Sheriff’s Department had investigated.
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