Pasco couple accused of killing 8-year-old now on federal “most wanted” list
A couple wanted for killing an 8-year-old Pasco boy are now among the nation’s top fugitives.
Edgar Casian-Garcia, 34, and his girlfriend, Araceli Medina, 38, are now on the list of the U.S. Marshals Service 15 Most Wanted Fugitives.
A $25,000 reward is being offered for the arrest of either of them. Anyone with information can report tips to the U.S. Marshals Service by phone at 877-926-8332 or online at usmarshals.gov/tips.
Edgar Casian-Garcia is 6-feet, 220 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes. He also goes by Edgar Salvador Casian and Edgar Salvador Garcia.
Araceli Medina is 5-foot-5, 125 pounds and has black hair and brown eyes. She has dyed her hair blonde previously. She is also known as Araceli Medina Tapia and Tapia Medina.
The move comes about 10 months after the couple were accused of murdering 8-year-old Edgar Casian and leaving his body in Finely where it was discovered in early February.
Murder charges
According to prosecutors, the couple abused Casian and his two young sisters by holding their heads underwater, cut them with razor blades and poured burning water on one of them.
They were frequently tied up and kept in the bathroom of a Pasco apartment, and in one of these instances, they allegedly killed Casian.
The couple have been on the run since June 2021 when they were charged with abandoning the two girls, 9 and 3, by the side of the road in Mexico
Franklin County prosecutors have charged them with aggravated first-degree murder, which carries a mandatory life sentence. In addition, they say the couple showed an egregious lack of remorse, deliberate cruelty and committed the crime within sight and hearing of a child.
They also are charged with four counts of first-degree child rape and three counts of first-degree assault of a child.
Missing Children
Casian’s mother Maria Quintero told the Herald last June that she called police and Washington state Child Protective Services several times after her ex-boyfriend took custody of their son and two daughters.
According to court documents, the three children had been living with their paternal grandmother for all of their lives. Casian-Garcia and Medina took custody of them in May 2020.
They soon stopped attending online classes. A Barbara McClintock Elementary School teacher called CPS to report that she was being lied to regarding where they were.
They were last seen when a Pasco police officer responded to a no-contact order violation and vandalism complaint at their Road 68 apartment. The children can be seen in the body camera footage.
Casian-Garcia reported to the school district that the children had moved to Vancouver on Sept. 28, 2020, and then the next month the couple moved into a Chapel Hill Boulevard apartment.
While they were living together, the couple would tie up the children and leave them in bathroom. They frequently abused the children.
Then one time, Casian-Garcia and Medina put a surgical mask over Casian’s face while he was tied up. They allegedly laid him down in the bathtub, aimed the showerhead at his face, turned it on and left, according to court documents. His sisters were left in the bathroom at the time.
The couple returned several hours later and he was dead.
They took his body out to a field in the area of South Finley Road and Highway 397. His bones were discovered there more than a year later in early February 2022.
The couple then took the girls to Mexico in October 2020 and eventually left them. They were discovered outside a convenience store in May 2021.
According to reports at the time, the older child was in a wheelchair, unable to walk, eat or use the restroom independently.
The girls have since been returned to the United States.
