An East Hartford man has been sentenced to more than 22 years in prison for trading sexually explicit pictures with an 11-year-old girl and attempting to meet her for sex, local and federal officials announced Tuesday.
Jose Antonio Quiroz-Martinez, 27, was sentenced in federal court in Hartford to 270 months in prison followed by 10 years of supervised release for enticing a minor to engage in sexual activity, U.S. Attorney John Durham said.
Quiroz-Martinez is a Mexican national who last lived in East Hartford when police discovered he was exchanging explicit photographs with an 11-year-old girl in April and May 2017, according to court documents.
That May, East Hartford officers kicked in a bathroom door at Quiroz-Martinez’s Cannon Road home and found him trying to destroy his cellphone by soaking it in the sink, police said at the time.
An analysis of the phone later revealed more than 4,000 images of child pornography, including images of toddlers or infants, others depicting sadistic or masochistic violence and images of bestiality, officials said Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Thompson also considered evidence that Quiroz-Martinez sexually assaulted 13- and 17-year-old girls in 2015, Durham said.
Quiroz-Martinez has been detained since his May 2017 arrest and pleaded guilty in January to using an interstate facility to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity.
The case was investigated by East Hartford police, federal prosecutors and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations office in Boston, officials said.
Quiroz-Martinez will face immigration proceedings when he is released from prison, officials said.
Zach Murdock can be reached at zmurdock@courant.com.
