Authorities revealed the official cause of death to KTLA on Friday for Oscar Hernandez, 13, who was found dead in a Ventura County ditch on April 2, 2025.
According to the Ventura County Medical Examiner’s Office, Oscar’s cause of death was acute ethanol intoxication, and the manner of death was ruled as homicide.
The National Institutes of Health states on its website that acute ethanol intoxication results from the ingestion of large amounts of ethanol, usually in the form of alcoholic beverages, and that the demographic most likely to present for acute alcohol intoxication is adolescents and young adults.
The death report did not provide further intel as to how Oscar may have been killed by ethanol intoxication, such as if he was forced to drink alcohol to the point of poisoning, etc. However, on April 7, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced that Oscar’s youth soccer coach — a traveling soccer coach with the Hurricane Valley boys soccer club near Sylmar — had formally been charged with murder in the 13-year-old’s death.
“The charges allege that Mario Edgardo Garcia Aquino, on the date of March 28, 2025, murdered Omar Hernandez in Lancaster,” D.A. Nathan Hochman said, adding that he was killed during the “commission or attempted commission of lewd acts with a child.”
Oscar was reported missing on March 30, and loved ones had repeatedly stated that the boy’s coach, 43-year-old Garcia Aquino, was the last person to see him alive after the teen took the train to visit him at his home in the Antelope Valley. Oscar’s body was found three days later in a ditch in a wooded area off an Oxnard road.
On April 4, two days after the missing boy’s body was found, Garcia Aquino was arrested in Los Angeles on an unrelated sexual assault charge from 2024. The coach was charged with assault with intent to commit rape in this case, which also involved a young boy he had coached.
In Oscar’s death, Garcia Aquino was charged with murder with special circumstances — lewd acts with a child. He would be eligible for the death penalty if convicted. Hochman reversed the County’s previous policy of seeking the death penalty in March.
According to the Ventura County Star on June 18, Garcia Aquino pleaded not guilty to Oscar’s murder and that he assaulted another boy.
Additional victims or anyone with information is urged to contact either the LAPD Abused Child Unit at 818-374-5415, or the LASD Special Victims Bureau at 877-710-5273. Anonymous tips can be provided online or by calling the L.A. Regional Crime Stoppers hotline at 800-222-8477.
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