A 21-year-old man wanted in connection with an attempted murder and a series of violent sexual assaults in East L.A. and other parts of Los Angeles was behind bars Wednesday. Sergio Andrew Garcia was apprehended in Mexico and returned to the United States to face a slew of criminal charges.
Garcia is a suspect in at least eight violent attacks and sexual assaults in the last month. He has been charged with attempted murder, robbery, assault with intent to commit rape, and penetration with a foreign object in connection with three attacks in recent weeks.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said Garcia fled to Mexico and was found in Tijuana by the Pacific Southwest Regional Fugitive Task Force on Tuesday at about 4:30 p.m. Garcia was arrested without incident, returned to the United States and booked at the East Los Angeles sheriff’s station, whose detectives had worked the investigation.
“I am amazed and impressed with the work that was done to capture this individual, because he needed to be off the streets,” said Sheriff Robert Luna.
Luna said the search for Garcia began after he allegedly assaulted a 67-year-old woman at around 6:15 a.m. July 15 in the yard of her East Los Angeles home. Investigators working with colleagues from the Los Angeles Police Department determined it was one in a string of attacks on women in the L.A. area.
Garcia approached the victim from behind, pulled her hair and threw her to the ground, where he repeatedly punched her in the face, officials said. Garcia was startled when a neighbor began to yell at him, they said, but continued to punch the woman two more times before he rode away on a bicycle.
Garcia allegedly pulled down the woman’s pants and underwear during the attack, according to the description of the assault by the Sheriff’s Department. The woman told KTLA that she had pain throughout her body, two black eyes and required a neck brace.
Luna said that, within 72 hours, East L.A. detectives had learned of two similar attacks inside the city limits with a suspect who matched Garcia’s description. By July 18, he had been identified as the alleged perpetrator.
The sheriff said Garcia was suspected of assaulting and robbing an 84-year-old woman in the 5200 block of Via Corona Street in East Los Angeles about 30 minutes after the assault on the woman in her yard. In the second case, he allegedly stole the woman’s car keys.
On July 16, the next morning, Luna said Garcia returned and stole the car and, shortly after, crashed it near the 10 Freeway and Western Avenue.
A third woman, age 55, came forward after seeing the department’s public outreach on the suspect and reported that she had been assaulted, also in East Los Angeles, on July 10 at 6:45 a.m. in the 1200 block of South Woods Avenue. Charges have been filed so far in those incidents.
Luna said a fourth possible victim in the sheriff’s territory came forward just two hours before Wednesday’s news conference announcing Garcia’s arrest.
LAPD Chief Michel Moore said his department had at least four separate assaults in which Garcia was a suspect — one on July 10, another on July 11 and two more on July 15. Moore said he believed Garcia could be responsible for other attacks: “We have likely only identified a small sampling of his activities.”
According to the police chief, the string of attacks began July 10 when a man matching Garcia’s description followed a woman as she walked under the 110 Freeway near Olympic Boulevard and L.A. Live Way and attempted to sexually assault her.
Moore said Garcia was also suspected in an attack near Chick Hearn Court and Georgia Street in downtown Los Angeles on July 11. Garcia allegedly slapped a woman on her backside and sexually assaulted her, he said.
On July 15, about three hours after the East L.A. assault on the 67-year-old woman, Garcia allegedly approached a woman who was walking home from church in the 1300 block of South Alvarado Street, hit her in the face multiple times, knocking her unconscious, and robbed her.
Minutes later, in the 1300 block of South Burlington Avenue, Moore said, he allegedly grabbed a woman who was rummaging through the trunk of her car and sexually assaulted her.
“We are not done; this person did not start this spree on the 10th of July,” Moore said. The chief said LAPD Cmdr. Lillian Carranza, who helps oversee the the department’s Central Bureau, previously worked with the U.S. Marshals Service and brought that agency into the investigation after learning the suspect had fled.
Chief Marshal Frankie Sanchez said the marshals’ foreign field office in Mexico made contact with authorities there about Garcia, who was then apprehended and deported to the United States.
Investigators say that Garcia has seven prior felony arrests but no convictions. Among those arrests is one in July 2021 on suspicion of battery and cruel or inhuman corporal punishment against a child, according to court records.
Richard Winton
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