Prosecutors add charges against L.A. soccer coach accused of raping and killing teen
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- Soccer coach Mario Edgardo Garcia-Aquino was charged with sexually abusing and killing a teenage player last year.
- Prosecutors on Tuesday filed an additional nine counts of sexual abuse against him involving another player he previously coached.
A San Fernando Valley soccer coach charged with sexually assaulting and killing one of his teenage players last year will face nine additional counts of sex abuse against a minor, authorities said Tuesday.
Mario Edgardo Garcia-Aquino, 43, 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, according to Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Thompson.
Garcia-Aquino pleaded not guilty to the new charges. Representatives for the Los Angeles County public defender’s office, which is representing the soccer coach, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The alleged abuse occurred between September 2022 and July 2023, Thompson said during a brief hearing in a downtown L.A. courtroom. Thompson told the court that prosecutors had uncovered “additional evidence” of abuse by Garcia-Aquino, but declined to offer details. The victim was also a player whom Garcia-Aquino had coached, Thompson said.
Garcia-Aquino, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador, was charged last year with killing 13-year-old Oscar Omar Hernandez during the commission of a lewd act at his Lancaster home in March. The boy, known as Omar, played for the Hurricane Valley Boys Soccer Club, which Garcia-Aquino coached in the Sylmar area.
Omar was last seen traveling to the Antelope Valley to help Garcia-Aquino make soccer jerseys, authorities said. His body was found in a ditch in Ventura County in early April.
Prosecutors have charged Garcia-Aquino with killing Omar after sexually assaulting him. The teen died of alcohol poisoning, according to coroner’s office records.
A sex abuse allegation against a youth soccer coach appears to have languished for months before the coach was charged with killing a 13-year-old boy.
The district attorney’s office faced scrutiny last year for its handling of a previous investigation into the coach. A Times investigation revealed 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. Thompson said the victim in all nine counts charged Tuesday was the same victim whose rape allegations the Sheriff’s Department had investigated.
The Times found the case had languished in a backlog of more than 10,000 that Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman inherited from his predecessor, George Gascón. Shortly after the Times article was published, Hochman ordered prosecutors to speed up reviews of cases involving allegations of sexual abuse or family violence.
A district attorney’s office spokesman said Tuesday that the backlog is now down to approximately 4,000 cases.
Garcia-Aquino is due back in court in late March. He has also been accused of sexually assaulting a third minor who played on his team in Sylmar in 2022. The Los Angeles Police Department investigated that case.
Both victims are expected to testify against Garcia-Aquino at a preliminary hearing later this year, Thompson said in court.
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