CLOVIS, NEW MEXICO -- A former U.S. Air Force sergeant was arrested on Thursday on child pornography charges.
A federal grand jury returned a six-count indictment that charged 30-year-old Christopher Garcia of Clovis with three counts of receipt of a visual depiction of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, and three counts of possession of matter containing visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
The incident, according to court records, accused Garcia of receiving and possessing child porn between Dec. 2011 and Jan. 2012 in Curry County. Authorities said at the time, Garcia was a sergeant in the Air Force assigned to the 16th Special Operations Squadron at Cannon Air Force Base.
Garcia made his initial appearance in federal court on Friday morning. If convicted, the maximum penalty for each charge of child pornography count is imprisonment for not less than five years and not more than twenty years. The maximum penalty for a conviction on each possession of child pornography count is ten years of imprisonment, authorities said.
He also faced up to a lifetime of supervides released and would be forced to register as a sex offender.
