The alleged boyfriend of formerly missing teen Alicia Navarro made a court appearance and pleaded not guilty to possessing child sexual abuse photos.
Edmund Davis, 36, was balding and had a beard and wore an orange jumpsuit as he entered a not guilty plea to two felony child sex abuse charges in a Zoom appearance at the District Court in Harve, Montana, on Monday.
Davis’ public defender, Casey Moore, said he would file a motion to reduce the bail, which was set at $1million, after speaking to the defendant’s dad and Assistant Attorney General Dan Guzynski.
Authorities have not yet said if Davis is a suspect in Alicia’s four-year disappearance.
Alicia ran away from her home in Glendale, Arizona, at the age of 14 in September 2019 and walked into a police station 1,000 miles away in Havre in July to take herself off the missing persons list.
Davis was arrested on October 23 after dozens of images of suspected child sex abuse material were found on his cell phone. Medical experts determined that the subjects in 10 of the images were under 13 years old and two of them were less than 5 years old. He was booked into the Hill County Detention Center.
He has been charged with possessing images of children under 12 engaged in actual or simulated sexual conduct, which carries a mandatory sentence of 25 years behind bars and up to 100. Davis has also been charged with possessing images of the sex abuse of kids under 16, which could result in four to 100 years in prison.
No more hearings for Davis were immediately set on Monday.
Alicia, now 19, was confirmed to be reunited with her family earlier this month.
‘I thank you all for all the support… My family is complete,’ wrote her mother, Jessica Nunez, on Facebook.
‘We need to heal and for that to be possible I will ask privacy… I thank everyone for all the concerns and support… god is a miracle worker.’
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