Former Pecos assistant coach indicted on federal sex crime charges

Phaedra Haywood, The Santa Fe New Mexican
·2 min read

May 15—A federal grand jury has indicted former Pecos High School assistant boys basketball coach Joshua Rico on five counts of using a method of interstate commerce to entice or coerce a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity.

Charging documents indicate Rico was arrested Friday in Santa Fe and is scheduled to make his first court appearance before a federal judge Monday.

The indictment accuses him of victimizing four minors — identified as Jane Does 1-4 — in San Miguel County between 2018 and 2020, and it seeks forfeiture of three iPhones used in the commission of his alleged crimes if he is convicted.

Each charge carries a potential penalty of 10 years to life in prison, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman.

Rico — the third Pecos coach to be charged with criminal sex acts against children in the past five years — has been accused in state court of using fake names to befriend young girls on social media platforms, enticing them to send compromising photos and then using the photos to blackmail the girls into sending him more photos or engaging in sex acts by threatening to publish the photos online.

The 4th Judicial District Attorney's Office charged Rico with 10 felony counts in February 2020 — including criminal sexual penetration, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, extortion, distribution of child pornography and criminal sexual communication with a child — after prosecutors say he sexually exploited three girls between 2013 and 2019.

District Attorney Thomas Clayton dismissed those charges in the fall pending further investigation and said Friday he was waiting to see how the U.S. Attorney's Office would prosecute before deciding how to proceed but was considering refiling the charges against Rico.

A woman who answered a phone with a number listed for Rico said "no comment" before hanging up Friday.

Pecos Independent School District Superintendent Debra Sena-Holton did not respond to a message seeking comment.

In 2019, former boys assistant coach Dominick Baca pleaded guilty to raping two Pecos High School students in 2017 and 2018. In 2018, former Pecos Middle School boys coach Apolonio Blea was charged with raping a 14-year-old Mora girl while he was a basketball manager at Mora in 2016. His case was dismissed in 2019 pending further investigation and was never refiled.

The Pecos school board, Rico, former Pecos Superintendent Fred Trujillo, and former Pecos Middle School Principal and athletic director Michael Lister were recently named as defendants in a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court. According to the lawsuit, Pecos school officials ignored repeated sexual assaults of students over the past decade, failed to prevent the abuse and retaliated against people who reported the misconduct.

That lawsuit was filed on behalf of Jane Doe, a former Pecos High School basketball player who prosecutors say was sexually exploited by Rico during the 2019-20 school year when she was a 14-year-old freshman.

Recommended Stories

  • Video shows South Carolina deputies repeatedly tasing Black man before he dies in jail

    Jamal Sutherland, 31, had been in a psychiatric facility less than a day earlier.

  • Ethereum co-founder and Crypto billionaire donates $1bn to India Covid fight – and currency instantly plummets

    Some of the ‘meme coins’ that were donated tanked in value by nearly 40%

  • China lands its Zhurong rover on Mars

    The six-wheeled robot has made the hazardous descent to the surface of the Red Planet, China announces.

  • 8 affordable gaming chair deals that will make you more comfortable

    The best gaming chair deals to shop right now include some of our top favorites from brands such as Secretlab and more—get the scoop.

  • A self-driving taxi went rogue, blocking traffic and evading officials, as a YouTuber captured it on video from the backseat

    The autonomous car attempted to turn into a lane that was blocked off. It stalls, then speeds down the road before roadside assistance can arrive.

  • Saturday morning UK news briefing: Today's top headlines from The Telegraph

    Welcome to your early-morning news briefing from The Telegraph - a round-up of the top stories we are covering on Saturday. To receive twice-daily briefings by email, sign up to our Front Page newsletter for free. 1. Boris Johnson: Indian variant poses real risk of disruption to our plans Boris Johnson on Friday warned that the Indian variant could “seriously disrupt” plans to lift the final Covid restrictions on June 21. The Prime Minister said he must “level with” the public about the threat posed by the new strain and said “hard choices” about the route out of lockdown could lie ahead. Read the full story. 2. Prince Harry’s broadside leaves senior royals bemused over his ‘woeful lack of compassion' The Duke of Sussex’s broadside about the Prince of Wales has left senior royals bemused over his “woeful lack of compassion” for his own family, The Telegraph understands. All three royal households were seemingly left reeling on Friday by the Duke’s suggestion that he had been failed not only by his own father but through association, by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh too. Read the full story. 3. Oxford University decolonising inch by inch, with imperial measurements the next target Oxford University has suggested imperial measurements should be "decolonised" over links to the British Empire. The mile, inch, yard, pound and ounce are “tied deeply to the idea of the Empire” and their presence in the curriculum could change, decolonising plans by Oxford’s maths, physics and life sciences faculty suggest. Read the full story. 4. Offer of face-to-face appointments ‘cannot happen overnight’, GPs warn patients GPs have rejected NHS instructions to immediately offer every patient a face-to-face appointment, warning the move “cannot happen overnight”. The British Medical Association (BMA) on Friday called on health chiefs to show “honesty” with the public about longer waiting times due to the effects of social distancing on patient flow in surgeries. Read the full story. 5. Edwin Poots vows to 'undermine' Northern Ireland protocol after being elected DUP leader The Democratic Unionist Party’s has elected a new leader who vowed to “systematically undermine and strip away all aspects” of the Northern Ireland protocol. Edwin Poots, the Stormont Agriculture Minister, beat the DUP’s Westminster leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson by just 19 votes to 17 at Friday’s election. Read the full story. Stay up-to-date with breaking news and the latest politics from The Telegraph throughout the day.

  • China has landed a spacecraft on Mars for the first time, delivering a water-hunting rover to the red planet

    The Zhurong rover is almost ready to start scanning Mars' volcanic-rock fields for hidden water ice. Such reserves could help future Mars astronauts.

  • A TikToker discovered a hidden staircase leading to a secret basement in their house

    Ripped-up posters cover the walls of the hidden basement, and some TikToker users said they were thoroughly creeped out in the comments section.

  • Washington mayor seen in profane shirt at Costco reacts to criticism: ‘I had no idea’

    “Your words do not represent our community.”

  • IRA killers behind deaths of 500 UK soldiers escaped justice despite veterans facing ‘witch hunt’

    The terrorists behind the killings of more than 500 British soldiers during the Troubles have escaped justice, an analysis of historic murders shows, fueling anger over the continued pursuit of veterans through the courts. A trawl of reported deaths of troops both in Northern Ireland and on the mainland shows that authorities failed to catch or else prosecute the killers in the vast majority of cases. In total, according to The Telegraph’s analysis, the murders of 516 soldiers went unpunished. Police and prosecutors secured convictions in just 71 cases, while in an additional five killings, the convictions were subsequently overturned on appeal. Veterans have repeatedly complained that they are being unfairly pursued through the courts for deaths as long as half a century ago, while terrorist suspects are no longer under scrutiny. Lawyers and politicians have argued that soldiers are currently disproportionately much more likely to face prosecution, not least because the Ministry of Defence (MoD) kept paperwork for all shootings committed by troops sent to Northern Ireland to keep the peace. Last week, two soldiers - known only as Soldier A and Soldier C - walked free from court after they were acquitted of the murder of Joe McCann, an Official IRA commander, who was shot and killed in 1971. Theirs was the first so-called ‘legacy’ trial, although others are in the pipeline.

  • Someone in Rhode Island bought land using Dogecoin

    It's the meme that just won't go away (but will go "to the moon," apparently). A Rhode Island man sold a vacant lot in Providence for 150,000 Dogecoin (or about $50,000 at the time), in what is believed to be the first real estate deal brokered using the meme-inspired cryptocurrency, local TV station WJAR reported Thursday. "He said, 'I think it would be really cool if we could only sell my lot using Dogecoin,'" realtor Kyle Seyboth said of the unnamed seller. Now, the sale has Seyboth's "phone ringing from people who want to do the same thing," even if fluctuating prices make it impossible to know whether the buyer or the seller will come out on top. Dogecoin first began as a joke, in the wake of 2013's popular Doge meme. But after recent endorsements from Elon Musk and a subreddit of online investors, the digital currency has seen quite the meteoric rise in value. Prices dropped after Musk's May 8 appearance on Saturday Night Live, and again when the SpaceX CEO announced Tesla would stop accepting "Bitcoin as payment," but still it remains the "fourth-largest crypto by market value on CoinMarketCap," per CNBC. As of Friday morning, Dogecoin was up 39.4 percent after crypto exchange platform Coinbase announced it would officially list the coin, reports CNBC. More stories from theweek.comThere's growing speculation that Meghan Markle and Prince Harry will name their daughter 'Philippa'Republicans' dishonest war against 'critical race theory'The Republican theory of unemployment is classic Marx

  • Dave Bautista says his 'Blade Runner 2049' performance finally made Hollywood 'see past my physicality'

    "I want to be a better actor. I want to do some drama. People would kind of giggle at me," Bautista said before landing the 'Blade Runner' role.

  • Elon Musk says he's working with Dogecoin developers to make the cryptocurrency more efficient

    Tesla stopped accepting bitcoin as payment for its cars this week, citing the environmental cost of the cryptocurrency's computer mining network.

  • The top 9 movies on Netflix this week, from 'Monster' to 'Oxygen'

    "The Mitchells vs. the Machines" repeated as Netflix's most popular movie this week, while new Netflix originals also made the list.

  • CVS worker forged COVID vaccine cards so kids could go to school in New York, cops say

    Police said the man told them, “I sell the cards to kids, so they can go to school.”

  • Biden sets a Tuesday deadline for the GOP to bring him an infrastructure counterproposal

    After a week of bipartisan meetings, Biden wants the GOP to expand on their $568 billion infrastructure counterproposal, and he wants to see it soon.

  • Driver catches fire after hoarded gas in vehicle explodes during chase, SC cops say

    The driver told deputies “that she was transporting several containers of fuel that she was hoarding in the trunk.”

  • CDC guidance allowing vaccinated people to ditch masks tests risk tolerance

    The CDC announced Thursday that fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks indoors.Why it matters: The U.S. is entering a new stage in the pandemic where the public — vaccinated or not — will need to assess its own risk tolerance in shared spaces.Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for freeThe big picture: Despite emerging evidence that vaccinated people are less likely to transmit the virus, the mass inability to validate vaccinations may be enough for some to keep their masks on in crowded or indoor spaces for a while longer.What's happening: Most states have already lifted mandates or are planning to. Grocery stores or restaurants, at least in some regions, will likely still require some mask use until more people are vaccinated.Yes, but: Less mask-wearing by vaccinated government officials and vaccinated people overall could reinforce the message to the hesitant that vaccines will speed the return to normalcy Jennifer Nuzzo, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins, tells Axios. "People's perception that vaccines change nothing is a hindrance to their willingness to get vaccinated," she said. The other side: "It's clear that outdoor activity is safe without masks and distancing, but indoor venues still pose risks," the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and Georgetown University Law Center said in a statement. "The difference between a supermarket, a restaurant or a gym (where masks aren't required) and an airport (where they are) doesn't make sense and isn't supported by science." Go deeper: America is finally winning its fight against the coronavirusLike this article? Get more from Axios and subscribe to Axios Markets for free.

  • Three more hand sanitizers are recalled because they have ‘toxic’ methanol

    Three hand sanitizers many have used nationally in the fight against COVID-19 contamination have been recalled because they contain methanol, according to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.

  • Seth Rogen says he and Jason Segel left their '8 Mile' audition in tears after making each other laugh

    The comic went out for the role of Cheddar and had to bring Jason Segel along because the casting director refused to read the lines.