{"id":580702,"date":"2026-02-10T21:12:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T21:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/580702\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T21:12:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T21:12:15","slug":"charges-added-against-l-a-soccer-coach-accused-of-raping-killing-teen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/580702\/","title":{"rendered":"Charges added against L.A. soccer coach accused of raping, killing teen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A San Fernando Valley soccer coach charged with sexually assaulting and killing one of his teenage players<\/a> last year will face nine additional counts of sex abuse against a minor, authorities said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Garcia-Aquino pleaded not guilty to the new charges. Representatives for the Los Angeles County public defender\u2019s office, which is representing the soccer coach, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n

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 \u201cadditional evidence\u201d of abuse by Garcia-Aquino, but declined to offer details. The victim was also a player that Garcia-Aquino had coached, Thompson said. <\/p>\n

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 in the Sylmar area that Garcia-Aquino coached. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Prosecutors have charged Garcia-Aquino with killing Omar after sexually assaulting him. The teen died of alcohol poisoning,<\/a> according to coroner\u2019s office records.<\/p>\n

The district attorney\u2019s office faced scrutiny last year for its handling of a prior investigation into the coach. A Times investigation<\/a> revealed the L.A. County Sheriff\u2019s Department asked prosecutors to charge Garcia-Aquino with sexually assaulting one of his players nearly a year before Omar was killed. <\/p>\n

Prosecutors didn\u2019t seek a warrant to arrest Garcia-Aquino in that case until about a week before Omar\u2019s death. Thompson said the victim in all nine counts charged Tuesday was the same victim whose rape allegations the Sheriff\u2019s Department had investigated. <\/p>\n

The Times found the case had languished in a backlog of more than 10,000 cases that Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman inherited from his predecessor, George Gasc\u00f3n. Hochman ordered prosecutors to speed up reviews of cases<\/a> involving allegations of sexual abuse or family violence shortly after The Times article was published.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Both victims are expected to testify against Garcia-Aquino at a preliminary hearing later this year, Thompson said in court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A San Fernando Valley soccer coach charged with sexually assaulting and killing one of his teenage players last…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":580703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[251931,47447,1582,276,6517,29418,281,3040,23868,2961,13940,224,5337,27173,1812,23867,251930,6617,7271,7307],"class_list":["post-580702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-additional-count","tag-alleged-abuse","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-case","tag-charge","tag-court","tag-department","tag-garcia-aquino","tag-la","tag-last-year","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-nathan-hochman","tag-office","tag-omar","tag-paul-thompson","tag-prosecutor","tag-teen","tag-victim"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116048399253566941","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}