BY MAIRE O’NEILL

Austin Cox will remain in custody pending trial, First Judicial District Chief Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer ordered Wednesday afternoon during a dangerousness hearing in Santa Fe.

Cox was arrested Dec. 4 and charged with 23 counts of criminal sexual penetration of a 13-16 year old, three counts of trafficking a controlled substance and four counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Cox has also been charged in two cases of possession of a controlled substance. Preliminary hearings in those cases had been scheduled for Friday in Los Alamos Magistrate Court but have been continued until he is evaluated for competency to stand trial on all three cases.

Assistant District Attorney Kent Wahlquist argued that Cox committed the crimes in two of the three current cases against him while he was on pre-trial probation and that Cox knew his victim was 15 years old when he took her to his residence where he provided her with drugs and alcohol and engaged in sex with her.

Wahlquist noted Cox’s prior criminal history including an arrest in September for indecent exposure which resulted in a Los Alamos Municipal Court charge. In that case, Los Alamos police officers were called to the Los Alamos Golf Course where they found Cox running down between the golf course and Club Road along Diamond Drive without clothing. Court documents indicate that Cox told police he did not know where his clothes were or how he got there.

While being transported to the Los Alamos Detention Center on the indecent exposure charge, Court documents state that Cox seemed to believe he had been arrested for “touching kids’ and insisted he did not.

Wahlquist urged Judge Marlowe Sommer not to release Cox on electronic monitoring because the crimes against the teen victim had occurred at his residence.