A former officer at a West Texas juvenile detention facility must serve two years in prison for having sex with one of the underage inmates.
Amber Mendoza was sentenced Tuesday in Odessa.
Mendoza pleaded guilty Monday to having an improper sexual relationship with a person in custody and to sexual assault of a child. The 27-year-old Mendoza received two years of probation for the sex assault count.
Investigators say Mendoza in 2014 had sex with a 16-year-old boy who was an inmate at the Ector County Youth Detention Center. Authorities say both encounters happened outside the lockup, when the boy had day or weekend passes to leave the facility.
Mendoza resigned as an officer last year amid the investigation of a cellphone smuggled into the center
