CHULA VISTA (CNS) - A former walk-on assistant football coach at Mar Vista High School was sentenced Wednesday to five years in state prison for engaging in lewd acts with a teenage girl over a several-month period, beginning when she was 13.
Edward Aaron Mendoza, 27, was also ordered to register as a sex offender for life.
He admitted engaging in sex acts with the ninth-grader at the Imperial Beach campus from September 2015 to the end of February 2016, authorities said. The girl turned 14 during that period.
Mendoza was arrested in April, after the girl's father discovered that she was having "extensive phone conversations with Mendoza and was having an inappropriate relationship with him," Lt. Dan Brislin said.
"Detectives discovered Mendoza had fostered an ongoing relationship with the victim and engaged in sexual activity with her at school over a period of about six months," the lieutenant said previously.
In his plea in July to four charges, including lewd acts on a child, Mendoza admitted touching the girl's private areas and having her send him a photograph of her private parts.
Mendoza left Mar Vista High last December, when the football season ended, said Manny Rubio, spokesman for the Sweetwater Union High School District.
