Yuma County warns residents about high-risk sex offender living near canal

The Yuma County Sheriff’s Office has notified residents that Jose Quintero-Cervantes is living at 304 S. May Avenue, #123 in Yuma, near the West Main Canal. The alert places him in Level 3, the highest public-notification category under Arizona’s sex-offender risk system, which is reserved for offenders assessed as posing the greatest risk to reoffend.

The sheriff’s office said Quintero-Cervantes is not wanted at this time, but the notice is meant to keep the public informed about where he lives and why law enforcement the warning necessary. Arizona law requires community notification after an offender is released from confinement or sentenced to probation, and only after the risk assessment is complete. Yuma County says that assessment is designed to predict recidivism and uses 19 criteria.

According to the sheriff’s office, Quintero-Cervantes was convicted on October 28, 1991, of attempted molestation of a child in Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix. The case involved a female juvenile known to him. He was sentenced to one year in jail and lifetime probation. That probation was revoked on January 10, 1994, and he was ordered to serve 10 years in the Arizona Department of Corrections, with credit for 452 days already served.

More recently, Quintero-Cervantes pleaded guilty on June 5, 2025, in Yuma County Superior Court to attempted failure to register as a sex offender and received 36 months of supervised probation. He later pleaded guilty on October 13, 2025, in Maricopa County Superior Court to failure to register as a sex offender and was sentenced to 15 years of supervised probation under Yuma County Adult Probation supervision.

The sheriff’s office says its community notification releases are issued under Arizona law and are intended to help neighbors stay aware while compliance is monitored. Yuma County and the City of Yuma also direct residents to OffenderWatch, which local agencies use to track offenders’ whereabouts, conduct and compliance status. The Arizona Department of Public Safety says that public information is meant to promote awareness about the potential threat sex offenders pose, while the sheriff’s office says abuse of notification information to threaten, intimidate or harass offenders will not be tolerated.