According to a civil counsel for the victim’s family, a 13-year-old Sun Valley child who was allegedly killed by his soccer coach passed away from severe alcohol poisoning.
The discovery prompts more inquiries into the hours leading up to the death of seventh-grader Oscar Omar Hernandez, also known as Omar, who was allegedly spending time with his soccer coach—a guy who has been charged with sexually abusing a teenager.
According to civil lawyer Michael Carrillo, “there are a lot of pieces that are coming together, but in the end, [the Hernandezes’] son is gone forever.”
In early April, 43-year-old youth soccer coach Mario Edgardo Garcia Aquino was charged with murder under extraordinary circumstances, which carries the death penalty.
California
The youth soccer coach who was implicated in the death of a 13-year-old has also been taken into custody on suspicion of committing another sexual assault in 2024.
Carrillo said that they were informed that Omar’s cause of death was acute alcohol intoxication, despite Sunday’s unsuccessful attempts to contact the Ventura County medical examiner’s office.
This family is still dealing with the anguish and sadness brought on by the information’s dissemination. According to Carrillo, they have finally determined that the cause of his disappearance and subsequent discovery in a ditch was alcohol consumption.
To visit Garcia Aquino, a young travel soccer coach with the Hurricane Valley boys soccer club in the Sylmar neighborhood, at his Lancaster home in late March, Omar traveled by train to the Antelope Valley. Omar’s family filed a missing person’s report after he did not come home. In early April, homicide officers from the Los Angeles Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation discovered his body in an Oxnard roadside ditch.
Garcia Aquino was charged on April 7 with murder, along with a special circumstance accusation of murder while engaging in or attempting to engage in sexual behavior with a minor. At the time, officials would not say how Omar was slain.
Earlier this month, Garcia Aquino appeared briefly in court and entered a not guilty plea. According to court documents, he is scheduled to return to court in August.
A request for comment on Sunday was not immediately answered by the Los Angeles County public defender’s office, which represents him.
Garcia Aquino was the focus of two previous investigations involving alleged child abuse, according to later reporting.
According to law enforcement authorities who spoke to The Times, he was not charged in a 2022 sexual assault case because the alleged victim refused to testify against him.
However, another adolescent accused Garcia Aquino of sexual abuse over a year before he was convicted with Omar’s murder. However, he wasn’t accused in that case for ten months, and it wasn’t until three days prior to Omar’s death that Garcia Aquino’s arrest warrant was requested.
Current District Attorney Nathan Hochman and Deputy District Attorney Ryan Erlich, the president of the union representing rank-and-file prosecutors, attributed the delay in filing charges to a backlog of nearly 10,000 cases due to a court staffing crisis and a decision by former Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon to centralize criminal filings electronically.
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