A “person of interest” in the murder of boy was faced with previous charges

A football coach for young people who, according to the police, is a “person of interest” for the death of a boy from Los Angeles, 13, was placed in police custody and accused of sexual assault in an unrelated incident, according to the authorities.

Mario Edgardo Garcia Aquino, who leads football to Whsesell Park, in North Hollywood, was arrested on Wednesday by the Los Angeles police service. On the same day, the detectives of the LAPD working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation recovered the body of Oscar Omar Hernandez along a sorry section of the county of Ventura.

The detectives of the Division of Homicides of LAPD carried out the arrest, which, according to them, is linked to a sexual assault in 2024 involving another alleged victim.

The family of Hernandez reported the adolescent who disappeared on Sunday, March 30, after he did not return home after visiting Garcia Aquino at the residence of the man of Lancaster.

The teenager, who lived in Sun Valley, had taken a train for the Antelope valley the day before his disappearance. When the boy’s brother tried to phone him later in the day, the coach responded to the boy’s mobile phone and said the boy was busy and couldn’t speak. According to the family and the investigators, Daniel Hernandez, the boy’s father, later called the coach and insisted that he will place the teenager near the family’s home.

The day after the boy’s disappearance, the investigators began to trace the movements of the coach and the boy after leaving his house in the San Fernando Valley.

The authorities also discovered that Garcia Aquino had been the subject of an investigation by the Sheriff department of the County of Los Angeles last year for allegations of sexual assault.

Last Wednesday, when the investigators were looking for the teenager, Garcia Aquino was accused of assault with intention to commit rape in relation to an incident of February 22, 2024 in which he would have “benefited from a confidence and confidence position in the aggression”, according to the judicial lockers filed in court. Garcia Aquino missed an indictment scheduled for Monday.

We do not know why the Los Angeles County Prosecutor’s Office did not charge him earlier.

Multiple sources of law in matters of law which declared that they were not authorized to speak publicly of the case said that Garcia Aquino was an immigrant undocumented by El Salvador.
Garcia Aquino has also been the subject of a LAPD investigation into the sexual assault of a minor in 2022, but was never charged because at that time, the alleged victim refused to testify against him, according to several sources of application of the law.

After the boy’s disappearance, investigators using data from cellular devices, mobile phone tours and other follow -up systems determined that the suspect visited the Oxnard area near McGrath State Beach and the Santa Clara river, according to sources of application of the law, not allowed to discuss the probe. Research on the feet by LAPD investigators and FBI agents led to the discovery of the boy’s body alongside North Harbor Boulevard north of West Gonzales Road. Investigators did not specify the cause of death.

On Thursday, the boy’s family held a vigil where her body was discovered. “We had this person at our home,” his sister Alejandra told Ktla through a translator. “He even helped us seek Oscar.”

Gladys Bautista, the boy’s mother, was wearing a football jersey and said her son “didn’t need to be treated like an animal. It was my son,” she said in Spanish.