FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, August 4, 2023

Defendant Attacked a Woman and a 15-Year Old in Separate Incidents Three Months After Release from Prison

            WASHINGTON – Justin Taylor, 23, of Washington, D.C., was sentenced today to 108 months in prison for sexual assaults in two separate cases, announced U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves, Acting Chief Pamela Smith, of the Metropolitan Police Department, and Chief Michael Anzallo, of the Metro Transit Police Department. Taylor pleaded guilty in one case on September 9, 2022, to third degree sexual abuse; and pleaded guilty today in the other case to one count of second degree child sexual abuse.  He will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

            According to the government’s evidence, shortly after 9:00 a.m. on January 26, 2022, in the 500 block of 42nd Street, N.E., the defendant followed a 15-year old girl he didn’t know as she was walking to school. As the two of them were walking down a path in a park at that location, the defendant asked the victim if she had ever seen a man’s genitals. When the victim turned around, Taylor was exposing himself and asked the victim whether she wanted to “do something?” The victim began to run away but tripped and fell. Before she could get up, the defendant, still exposed, ran up and grabbed her buttock with his hand, through her clothing, again asking, “Do you wanna do something?” The victim yelled at the defendant, “No. Don’t touch me,” swung her fist at the defendant, and escaped to a friend’s home, where she reported the sexual assault to her friend and her friend’s mother.

            Two days later, in the early afternoon of January 28, 2022, Taylor followed an adult woman he didn’t know down the street-level escalator at the Shaw/Howard University Metro Train Station, located at 1801 7th Street, N.W. When Taylor and the victim got to the bottom of that escalator, the defendant grabbed the victim from behind and by surprise, holding her around the waist so that she could not get away from him. Taylor, while restraining the woman, pressed his penis against the victim’s buttocks. The woman fought back and hollered for help until she was able to escape Taylor’s grasp. Taylor fled up the Metro escalator, left the area and got on a Metro bus. Shortly thereafter, Metro Transit Police removed Taylor from that bus and brought him back to an area near the Metro Station, where the victim identified him as the person who had assaulted her. Taylor was then arrested.

            In 2018, Taylor was charged in a similar case and pleaded guilty to one count of attempted third-degree sexual abuse with force.  He was sentenced to 18 months in prison but was given the benefit of sentencing under the Youth Rehabilitation Act (“YRA”), which he will lose as a result of today’s convictions.  He was also sentenced in that case to seven years of supervised release and was, in fact, released from prison less than three months before committing these offenses. 

            In announcing the sentence, U.S. Attorney Graves, Acting Chief Smith, and Chief Anzallo commended the work of those who investigated the case from the Metropolitan Police Department and Metro Transit Police Department. They also expressed appreciation for the work of those who handled the cases at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, including Paralegal Specialist Garcia Clarke, former Paralegal Specialist Brenda Williams, Victim/Witness Advocate Veronica Vaughan and Supervisory Victim/Witness Advocate Roderick Johnson.

            Finally, they commended the work of Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter V. Taylor, who investigated and prosecuted the case.