Band videos show young girl with man accused of impregnating his daughter

Editor’s note: This story contains discussion of domestic abuse. If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233 in the U.S.

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The search continues for a California man accused of sexually abusing and impregnating his 14-year-old daughter after their newborn baby was found dead beside a rural road, as images of the adult suspect with a young girl have been unearthed. 

Sergio Galvez Perez, 38, is believed to be hiding his daughter, who is both an alleged victim of incest and sexual abuse and wanted on suspicion of killing the baby she delivered beside a Monterey County road. It’s not clear why police are pursuing the girl as a murder suspect when they have also described her as a victim of horrific sexual abuse at the hands of her father.

In videos of Perez’s musical act, posted online before they vanished, a girl stands unsmiling at a keyboard while he plays guitar and sings beside her. She occasionally raises her eyes from the keys and looks directly into the camera. SFGATE has not verified that the young girl next to Perez is his daughter. 

Investigators say Perez impregnated his daughter when she was 13 and is the father of the baby that was found dead on Aug. 1. The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office has named the infant “Baby Angelita.”

“We can now confirm that Sergio Galvez Perez is the biological father of the 14-year-old murder suspect and the biological father of Baby Angelita,” Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto said in a video statement Monday.

The videos of Perez and the young girl appear on the Facebook page of his band, El Águila Real y Su Ritmo Sabroso, or “The Royal Eagle and His Irresistible Rhythm.” The act has approximately 2,600 Facebook followers and has posted recordings of Perez playing and singing in homes, at parties and at public events.

The girl appears beside him in several of the videos. In one recording, she sits at a keyboard while Perez, dressed in a bright red shirt and wearing a cross around his neck, plays an acoustic guitar. A large cut-out of Mexican singer Vicente Fernández hangs on the wall behind them. 

A separate music video, viewed approximately 2,700 times on YouTube before the case broke, shows Perez in a Salinas park with two women. He acts romantically toward both women during a song titled “Estas Hermosa Como Tu Amiga,” or “You’re as Beautiful as Your Friend.”

The sheriff’s office has circulated additional pictures of Perez taken from his musical act’s videos. His appearance varies considerably across the footage, and investigators hope the images will help people who have seen him perform recognize him. 

New details provided this week by sheriff’s office Cmdr. Andres Rosas reveal that detectives found four other children living in the family home under conditions they considered unsafe.

Perez’s wife, Ofelia Garcia Ortega, 36, was arrested on suspicion of felony child endangerment and later released on bail. Rosas told the Pajaronian the allegation rests partly on investigators’ belief that Ortega “failed to obtain medical care for her daughter when the circumstances should have prompted a reasonable parent to take the girl to a doctor.”

Authorities have not said whether the four other children were removed from the home. It is also unclear whether the 14-year-old or her siblings were enrolled in school, whether she continued attending while pregnant or whether Monterey County Family and Children’s Services had previously received reports concerning the household. SFGATE contacted the county Department of Social Services for answers but had not heard back by publication time. 

Rosas said the family has ties to Tierra Blanca in the Mexican state of Guerrero. Investigators believe Perez and the girl may still be in the Castroville or Salinas area, have traveled elsewhere in the United States or have fled to Mexico.

“She could be willingly with him. She may not be willingly with him,” Rosas told the Pajaronian. “She may be with him against her will. … We don’t know that.”

Deputies encountered Perez approximately four weeks before Nieto’s Monday statement, the week that the deceased infant was found, because of an unrelated misdemeanor warrant, Rosas told the Watsonville outlet. Perez was cited and released because investigators had not yet established probable cause connecting him to Baby Angelita’s death. 

The investigation began at approximately 8:30 a.m. on Aug. 1, when firefighters, emergency medical workers and sheriff’s deputies responded to a report of a baby beside the 100 block of Struve Road, in a rural area north of Moss Landing. Fire personnel pronounced the newborn girl dead at the scene.

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Investigators say the 14-year-old had given birth beside the road, placed the infant on the ground and left. The baby still had her umbilical cord attached and showed signs of traumatic injury during a postmortem examination. Authorities have not disclosed the nature of those injuries or a more specific cause of death.

A Monterey County Superior Court judge subsequently issued a murder warrant for the girl. Perez, a resident of the Castroville and Salinas area, is wanted on suspicion of incest, committing lewd or lascivious acts with a child younger than 14, committing lewd acts with a minor, unlawful sexual intercourse, child concealment and child endangerment.

California law generally shields juvenile court proceedings from public view, and authorities have not released the girl’s name.

Investigators initially had little information beyond the dead baby beside the road.

“They did not have a suspect standing in front of them. They did not have a name,” Nieto said. “They had a newborn baby found along the side of a road, and they had to build this case piece by piece.”

The investigation initially centered on a beige 2010 Mercury Milan bearing California license plate 6HCR883. Detectives released photographs of the sedan and asked anyone who had seen it in northern Monterey County or Salinas to come forward. The vehicle was subsequently located and recovered.

The sheriff’s office said Flock automated license plate reader cameras helped detectives identify and track the Mercury. Within 53 hours of Baby Angelita’s discovery, investigators had identified people connected to the case.

But Perez and his daughter remain missing. Nieto urged Perez to surrender and said investigators will continue using every lawful resource available to find him and the teenager.

“You need to turn yourself in,” Nieto said. “You need to turn yourself in to the Monterey County detectives or to a police officer.”

“We need to find this 14-year-old child,” she added. “We need Sergio Galvez Perez to stop hiding and face the charges against him.”

Nieto described the teenager as both a child facing serious allegations in the death of her baby and a victim of her father.

“At the center of this is two children,” Nieto said, referring to Baby Angelita and the teenager. The girl, she added, “is also a victim because of the sexual abuse by her own father.”

That description presents a contradiction. The girl is a child whom investigators say was sexually abused and impregnated by her father at 13, carried the resulting pregnancy and gave birth beside a road at 14, apparently without medical assistance. Yet she is also the subject of a murder warrant, transforming a suspected child sexual abuse victim into a wanted fugitive.

Authorities have not explained what evidence led them to accuse the teenager of murder, rather than concluding that she acted under coercion, extreme trauma or during a medical emergency associated with giving birth. Nor have they explained how her age and alleged abuse at the hands of her father factored into the decision to seek the warrant. 

Anyone who sees Perez or the girl should not approach them and should call 911 immediately. Anyone with information about the investigation or their whereabouts may contact Monterey County sheriff’s detective Sgt. Nicholas Kennedy at 831-755-3773 or Detective Richard Geng at 831-759-7279. Tips may be provided anonymously.