Vanderwagen man charged in child sexual contact case

A Vanderwagen man faces charges of criminal sexual contact of a minor and attempt to commit a felony after investigators pieced together statements from a child, her younger sister and a forensic interview tied to a Jan. 21, 2023 incident. The case now moves toward a June 24 preliminary examination in Gallup Magistrate Court, where a judge will decide whether the prosecution has enough evidence to move forward.

Gallup police officer Julio Yazzie was contacted after a report of inappropriate touching of a minor. Yazzie spoke with Leighsah Brown of Child Protective Services in Window Rock, Arizona, who relayed what the victim and her younger sister said about the incident. The younger sister later repeated her account in a forensic interview in May 2023, giving investigators another recorded account of what the children described.

A friend of the victim also told investigators that the girl said she was afraid to be at David’s house. Investigators said those statements matched what they had been told directly, and Yazzie concluded there was probable cause to arrest the accused man on the criminal sexual contact charge. The arrest warrant was served on May 28, 2026.

Under New Mexico law, criminal sexual contact of a minor means the unlawful and intentional touching of a minor’s intimate parts, or causing a minor to touch the accused’s intimate parts. The charge is treated as a serious felony, and the separate attempt count reflects the state’s ability to prosecute conduct that moves a case toward a felony offense even if the act was not completed.

New Mexico court rules also allow videotaped deposition testimony in some child sexual offense cases when a child cannot testify without unreasonable mental or emotional harm and other safeguards are met. That makes forensic interviews especially important in cases like this one, where early statements from a child and a sibling can become part of the evidence reviewed by prosecutors and the court.

For McKinley County families, the next date matters because a preliminary examination is the first major court check on whether the case should advance. The timeline stretches from the January 2023 report to the May 2023 interview, then to the May 28 warrant service and the June 24 hearing, showing how child-protection work and criminal court can unfold slowly in a serious felony case.