A 45-year-old New Westminster man has been designated a high-risk violent offender and is banned from transit for three years after two sexual assault convictions.
The first sexual assault took place on May 2, shortly after 4 p.m., when the man, identified as Jason Steven Taylor, boarded a #19 bus at Metrotown. Taylor sat next to a 19-year-old woman and started rubbing her thigh while “engaging her in inappropriate personal conversation,” noted a press release issued by Transit Police last spring.
The second incident happened on May 19, when, again, the offender sat next to another 19-year-old woman, this time on a bus heading westbound on Lougheed Highway from Colony Farm Road in Coquitlam.
According to police, the man ran his hand up the woman’s thigh and showed her pornographic videos on his phone. When she got off the bus at Braid Street station, he made a comment about her body.
On June 4, the man was arrested and charged with two counts of sexual assault, and in November Taylor was found guilty of the charges against him.
Taylor was sentenced to nine months in prison, less time served, and three years on probation with conditions that forbid him from possessing weapons, having contact with the victims, owning a cellphone or any wifi-capable devices, and riding on any transit system in the Lower Mainland.
As a high risk violent offender, Taylor will be monitored by the Ministry of Justice.
