16-year-old found dead in dirt field in 2022, CA cops say. Now, there’s an arrest (2025)

More than two years after a 16-year-old boy was found stabbed to death in a dirt field, an arrest has been made, California deputies say.

Antonio Rodriguez, 26, was arrested April 28 in relation to the death of Robert Schmidt Jr., the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said in an April 29 news release.

Schmidt’s mother saw him last when she dropped him off at a skate park the night before he was found dead, KTLA reported in 2022.

Elizabeth Schmidt, who worked the graveyard shift and didn’t learn her son was missing until the next morning, filed a missing persons report and began searching for him, she told the news outlet.

“When we were driving by, we had seen the fire department pulling up on scene and them taping it off,” the mother told KTLA. “In that moment, I knew that that was my son.”

Robert Schmidt Jr. was discovered in an Apple Valley dirt field the morning of Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022, according to deputies.

After finding Schmidt with “traumatic injuries,” first-responders pronounced him dead on scene, deputies said.

“Why would you leave my son in the dirt?” Elizabeth Schmidt said in an interview with KNBC. “You know. Why?”

Robert Schmidt Jr., was a “good kid,” who “never got into trouble,” according to a GoFundMe set up for the family.

“Our family is completely devastated and at a loss for words,” his aunt wrote on the GoFundMe. “We don’t understand why this has happened or who would do this.”

He was also “compassionate, kind, so funny and goofy in his own way,” his obituary says.

“Anyone who knew Robert loved him and always wanted to be around him,” according to his obituary.

More than two years later, following a “tireless investigation,” detectives identified Rodriguez as a suspect in Schmidt’s killing, deputies said.

“I’m so relieved we can finally say my boy has gotten justice,” his mother wrote in a Facebook post. “We have been fighting for justice and have been so patient since 10/18/22.”

She asked others to keep her family in their prayers.

“There’s no more information we can provide right now but our fight isn’t over yet,” she wrote.

Rodriguez is being held without bail on a murder charge, deputies said.

Apple Valley is about 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles.