Former Las Cruces elementary school janitor sentenced for child porn possession
A former school janitor for a Las Cruces elementary school has been sentenced to eight years in prison on a federal child pornography charge, announced officials with the New Mexico U.S. Attorney General’s Office.
David Anaya Garcia, 33, was sentenced in a federal court Tuesday to 96 months in prison, followed by five years of supervised release.
Garcia will be required to register as a sex offender when he completes his prison sentence. At the time he committed the crime, Garcia was employed as a janitor at Mesilla Park Elementary. He was arrested in July 2015.
At the time of Garcia’s arrest, a spokeswoman with the Las Cruces Public Schools District told ABC-7’s New Mexico Mobile Newsroom Garcia worked overnight. Students were present at school during the final hour of his shift, the spokeswoman added.
According to the complaint affidavit, Homeland Security Investigations initiated the federal investigation after state investigators revealed an IP address subscribed to Garcia’s residential address was being used to download child pornography.
The Las Cruces Police Department and HSI arrested Garcia and executed a federal search warrant at his home on July 1, 2015.
Garcia was indicted on Sept. 16, 2015, and charged with distributing child pornography on March 26, 2015, receiving child pornography from March 2015 through April 2015, and possessing child pornography on July 1, 2015.
Officials said Garcia pled guilty Monday to receipt and distribution of child pornography and admitted that between March 12, 2015 and April 30, 2015, he distributed child pornography through file-sharing software that allowed others to download the images and videos he saved to a shared folder.
Garcia further admitted that on July 2, 2015, agents from HSI executed a search warrant on his home where they seized an HP Pavilion laptop containing five images and 88 videos depicting child pornography and a thumb-drive containing 56 images and 55 videos depicting child pornography.
Anyone with information relating to suspected child predators and suspected child abuse is encouraged to contact federal or local law enforcement.
