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A Lubbock man is being held for the U.S. Marshals in the Lubbock County Detention Center, facing charges of downloading child pornography and sexually assaulting a child.

Twenty-two-year-old Elyas Anthony Rocha was arrested in June 2020 after federal investigators identified that an IP address linked to Rocha had downloaded child porn on multiple occasions.

According to reports, the investigation began in June 2019, when Home Security Investigations received information from the legal department of a company called Kik Interactive, an instant messaging application based in Canada.

Kik sent information regarding a private chat group being used by multiple people in their app to exchange images of child pornography. One of those user accounts was linked to an email address and an IP address belonging to Rocha.

Sometime in February 2020, authorities were able to link Rocha’s home address to an IP address being used at that location to download child pornography. Rocha was arrested on June 25th, 2020, and a search of his phone quickly turned up images of child porn.

Rocha was booked into the Lubbock County Detention Center and later pleaded not guilty on August 24th. Court documents say that while in custody, Rocha admitted to sexually assaulting his younger cousin several years ago. He now faces an additional charge of Sexual Assault of a Child.

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