Font ResizeLAS CRUCES - A 13-year-old who robbed a Pic Quik at gunpoint in November was taken back to jail after allegedly ditching his ankle monitoring bracelet and running away from home, according to the Las Cruces Police Department.
Jonathan Esparza, an eighth-grader at Lynn Middle School, was authorized to be released from the Do a Ana County juvenile detention center Tuesday evening.
Las Cruces police officers were called to Esparza's family's residence in the 1900 block of Calle de Sue os on Friday evening, where Esparza's mother said the boy had taken off his bracelet and run away because he had been grounded for getting in trouble at school. About 30 minutes later, the boy came home and the Juvenile Probation Office authorized him to be detained for four days.
Esparza is serving a two-year probationary sentence after he went into the Missouri Avenue convenience store on Nov. 2, brandishing what appeared to be a .45-caliber handgun as he demanded the store's money.
After pleading guilty to armed robbery, Esparza was sentenced in late November to the maximum of 15 additional days in jail and two years' probation by Children's Court Judge Fernando Macias. In addition to incarceration, Esparza was ordered to undergo anger management, grief counseling and multi-systemic therapy, a form of in-home counseling that reduces the risk of arrest by 10.5 percent, according to the Justice Policy Institute.
Ashley Meeks can be reached at (575) 541-5462.
