A neighbor of the soccer coach accused of killing a 13-year-old boy says he was often around children. Karma Dickerson reports for the NBC4 News at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, April 8, 2025.
A 'missing person' flyer asking for help in the search for 13-year-old Oscar Omar Hernandez was still posted Tuesday at the San Fernando Valley park where he used to practice soccer.
The piece of paper with the North Hollywood boy's photo was posted at Whitsett Soccer Field after Oscar Omar was reported missing by his family March 30. Days later, his body was found off the side of a road in Oxnard.
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The child's 43-year-old soccer coach, Mario Edgardo Garcia Aquino, was charged Monday with murder in a chain of developments that left the community stunned and seeking answers.
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SIGN UP "He used to bring children in the front and used to have them playing soccer," said Jasmin Martinez, a former neighbor of Garcia Aquino in Sylmar, where authorities said he was a youth soccer coach in the Hurricane Valley boys soccer club.
Family members said Oscar Omar took a train March 28 to Garcia Aquino's current home in the Lancaster/Palmdale area of the high desert north of Los Angeles. They said they believed he was being paid for odd jobs at his coach's property.
Five days later, Oscar's body was found about 80 miles to the southwest in the Ventura County community of Oxnard.
Garcia Aquino was initially arrested last week on an unrelated sexual assault case from 2024, in which he allegedly attacked a 16-year-old at a home in Lancaster. He was charged Tuesday with an additional count for an alleged sexual attack on a teen in 2022.
Martinez said she felt he often made up excuses to visit her and her four children.
"Most of the time, he was always trying to, like, be around children," Martinez said.
Martinez said Garcia Aquino was her neighbor in 2021. She last saw him in 2023 and never witnessed anything that made her suspect the boys who visited the house were being mistreated, but did hear shouting.
"He did have a few boys around here, was around seven, eight boys," Martinez said. "He used to always bring in the front yard, and he used to have them inside.
"The only thing was he was just always shouting all the time, always slamming things inside."
Oscar's family members told NBCLA they had reservations about the child staying with Garcia Aquino, but there was a level of trust with the soccer club coach.
Law enforcement officials told NBCLA they received numerous calls from the public after requesting information at a news conference Monday on other unreported incidents involving the coach.
The case filed Monday charged Garcia Aquino with a single count of first-degree murder, with the special circumstance allegation that the murder happened during the commission of another violent felony, such as a robbery or rape.
Garcia Aquino faces at least life without the possibility of parole on the murder charge along with six years in prison for the sex assault charge.
LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman, who announced his office is seeking the death penalty again last month, said he would consider seeking the capital punishment for Garcia Aquino.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles issued a statement Tuesday in response to questions about Garcia Aquino's immigration status.
"This was an avoidable crime and the result of failed border policies," said United States Attorney Bill Essayli. "We cannot and will not tolerate illegal aliens who flout our nation’s immigration laws then prey on children. Federal law enforcement will continue to be very aggressive in locating, apprehending, and prosecuting criminal illegal aliens."
Garcia Aquino made a court appearance Tuesday, but his arraigned was continued. It was not immediately clear whether he has an attorney.
