The El Farolito soccer team’s 2-0 extra time loss on Wednesday night to Sacramento Republic was marred by a full-team melee in the 122nd minute. Then, it got worse: El Farolito players climbed into the stands and clashed with spectators.
According to El Farolito’s players, staff, and eyewitnesses on the scene, what sent players rushing into the stands was a fan allegedly kicking three-year-old Jeremy Bengtson, the son of Farolito striker Dembor Bengtson, in the groin.
The boy’s mother was caught on video afterward, still holding Jeremy, shouting at a security guard in Spanish that her son had been kicked by the man she pointed out to him — “and you let him go.”
The fracas occurred at Heart Health Park in Sacramento during El Farolito and Sacramento Republic’s opening match in the U.S. Open Cup tournament, a longstanding annual competition for professional and amateur teams.
U.S. Soccer said Thursday it is aware of the incident and has referred the matter to its Open Cup Adjudication & Disciplinary Panel. “A safe environment for everyone attending and participating in Open Cup matches remains one of our highest priorities,” the federation said. Both clubs could face sanctions.
Sacramento Republic FC issued a statement Thursday evening on social media, saying the club “prides itself on being a professional organization that respects and abides by the rules of the game” and that it would support U.S. Soccer’s investigation into “the on- and off-field elements of last night’s match.”
The statement did not mention El Farolito by name, nor did it address the alleged attack on a child by a fan in the stands. The club did not respond to specific questions from Mission Local.
As Mission Local reported after the game, the trouble on the field began when Sacramento midfielder Mark-Anthony Kaye — a former MLS All-Star, Canadian international, and one of the club’s marquee offseason signings — walked toward the Farolito bench to celebrate the second goal in front of the opposing players.
Farolito midfielders Herlbert Soto and Jhohann Yabur followed him. A scuffle broke out involving nearly every player on both sides pushing, shoving, and holding their teammates, and the occasional loose punch that, thankfully, landed nowhere.
The referee ejected Soto, Yabur, and Kaye. The two coaching staffs exchanged words and eventually moved on. The match, finally, seemed to be over.
But many watching — whether on the livestream or even from further back in the stands — could not see what was about to happen at the front of Section 107, along the fence separating the field from the bleachers.
There, Bengtson’s wife, Grecia Rodríguez, sat with three-year-old Jeremy and their two older daughters, ages 10 and 11, along with other Farolito families and a couple of inactive players.
Sacramento supporters near them, they say, had been hostile all night. And when the second goal went in, several turned directly to Rodríguez. “Garbage team, garbage team,” they shouted in her face. She shot back: “Took everything you had, didn’t it?”
With the on-field skirmish apparently winding down, the families had stood up to make their way toward the exit — the match was over, the loss accepted.
Some Farolito players began walking toward the bleachers to greet them — a normal end-of-game ritual. Midfielder Gabriel Arias and super-sub Jhonatan Pérez had already reached the rooting section when the situation allegedly turned physical.
According to Rodríguez, a man with a bandana over his face shoved her from behind as she was leaving. Her three-year-old Jeremy was in front of her, holding her hand.
She turned around and confronted the man. “You don’t have the guts to come here and hit a woman,” she says she told him. When he saw more El Farolito players arriving, Rodríguez says the man kicked at her, but his kick struck the boy’s groin instead. Jeremy began to cry.
Accounts of what happened next vary. What holds across all is that Pérez was shoved hard into the railing — a teammate had to grab him to keep him from falling headfirst onto the field.
The rest of the team, seeing chaos erupt in the section where their wives and children were sitting, ran toward the bleachers. Team captain Jonathan Mosquera entered the stands specifically to pull Jeremy out, carrying the boy down to the field where Arias’ sister-in-law could watch over him.
Video shows Arias holding his wife as she cried, both of them pressed against the fence as the crowd surged around them, unable to move. So were the rest of the wives and children.
Bengtson, the striker, was still on the field when he saw his teammates running toward the stands. He followed not yet knowing what had happened, only that his family was there.
When he reached them and learned what the man with the bandana had purportedly done, he took off toward the stadium’s northwest exit in pursuit. He and his teammates were held back, they say, by security and Sacramento Republic staff. The man had already disappeared into the crowd.
“I saw my wife crying and my son crying,” Bengtson said. “I went looking for the guy, but he was already leaving calmly. We told security but they were more focused on grabbing us than on the adult who had done that. They did nothing to stop him.”
Farolito coach Santiago López says he pointed out the alleged aggressor, the man with the bandana over his face, to a security guard. “He responded very arrogantly, saying I was making things up,” López said. “I told security, watch that person — he’s the one who attacked the child. And they let him go.”
Still holding Jeremy, Rodríguez tearfully confronted a security guard in Spanish after the game and postgame melee. “My son is three years old!” she told him. “He kicked him in the balls! Pick on someone your own size, not a baby. And you let him go!”
Rodríguez filed a police report with Cal Expo Police, whose jurisdiction includes Heart Health Park, on Thursday. Officer Chris J. Smith gave her a report number and told her they would investigate. The Cal Expo Police Department did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.
She says she is willing to travel to Sacramento to identify the suspect if needed. Security staff at the stadium were overheard saying they expected to see the alleged aggressor at Sacramento’s next home game on Saturday, which suggests they may have known who he was.
“El Farolito is a family,” Rodríguez said. “If they touched my son, it’s like they touched one of their children. They immediately jumped in to protect us. They had already accepted the loss — two-nil, things had calmed down on the field. Up in the stands, it was another problem.”
To those outside of the fracas, it looked like El Farolito’s players had gone into the stands to mix it up with opposing fans. A Sacramento supporter standing near the exit summed up what many were likely thinking: “There should be an arrest made,” she said. “I don’t come here to be attacked in the stands.”
From the first confrontation on the field to the last, the entire episode lasted more than 12 minutes. Throughout it all, the stadium DJ cycled through War’s “Why Can’t We Be Friends,” Bob Marley’s “One Love,” and Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax.” None of it worked.
Jeremy was not seriously injured and did not require medical attention. But the night stayed with him. On the drive home from Sacramento, he kept telling his mother: “Mamá, you didn’t save me. You didn’t hold my hand.”
“It hurt to hear that,” Bengtson said, “and not be able to defend him.”
“I feel powerless because I couldn’t take care of him the way I would have liked,” Rodríguez said. “He keeps telling me, ‘Mommy, you didn’t hold my hand.’ He’s been going to stadiums since he was in my belly — we had never lived through anything like this.”
El Farolito’s NPSL season opens next month — assuming U.S. Soccer’s disciplinary panel allows it to.