CHICAGO – A convicted sex offender who repeatedly harassed women on the CTA and downtown streets has been given a four-year prison sentence after pleading guilty Tuesday to three felonies.
Judge Angela Munari-Petrone sentenced 40-year-old David Buckner after he pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and one count of aggravated assault in a public place.
In 2017, after prosecutors accused Buckner of harassing four women on the CTA, he allegedly told police that he had “probably” done the same thing to 75 women on the transit over the previous two months. Ultimately, a judge found Buckner not guilty by reason of insanity, but ordered him to register as a sex offender.
Then, despite a flurry of incidents and arrests in 2022, officials continued to put Buckner back on the streets.
Two women accused him of assaulting them on the Magnificent Mile in July 2022, but prosecutors declined to charge him with a crime, Chicago police noted in his arrest report.
Two more women accused him of inappropriately touching them at the Roosevelt CTA station while he was out on bail on those charges. Again, he was only charged with a misdemeanor.
Then, in October 2022, while out on bail for those two cases, he allegedly assaulted an 18-year-old woman on the Loyola campus, not far from the Red Line station. Again, he was only charged with a misdemeanor.
After our reporting, officials identified four more victims with five crimes.
They said he grabbed a 39-year-old woman’s buttocks from behind as they rode an escalator at TJ Maxx, 11 North State, on August 27, 2022. The victim screamed and pushed people in front of her onto the escalator to get away. away from him and signaled the police. But Buckner escaped.
He allegedly confronted a 28-year-old woman walking to lunch near Randolph and State on Oct. 16, 2022. Buckner grabbed her private area with his hand and said something like, “What? Don’t you like that?”
The woman returned to the clothing store and reported what had happened to a manager. She told her supervisor that she recognized Buckner because he had been in the store two days earlier and told her she was making him get an erection.
Buckner entered the Sephora store, 605 North Michigan, on October 18, 2022, and allegedly tried to grab a female employee. Another employee intervened and summoned a manager. Buckner said he was looking for a gift for his wife, Taylor Swift, and then grabbed the manager’s buttocks over her clothing. The victim and a witness identified Buckner in photo lineups.
On October 24, 2022, two women flew into O’Hare for a business trip and took the Blue Line to Monroe. Buckner got off the train with them and one of the women noticed him enjoying himself on the platform, prosecutors said. She rushed her colleague to the escalator without explaining why.
Buckner walked behind the women and continued to pleasure himself until he was done with the second woman’s buttocks and leggings. The 30-year-old victim called police from her hotel room, and CPD took her leggings for DNA testing. CTA cameras recorded the incidents.
75 women
In July 2017, prosecutors filed several charges against Buckner, including criminal sexual abuse with force, aggravated battery and unlawful restraint, for allegedly groping and grabbing four women during a series of incidents at the CTA.
Prosecutors said he “admitted to abusing approximately 75 women at CTA over the past two months,” the spokesperson said. This is reported by the Chicago Tribune at the time.
Authorities accused him of grabbing an 18-year-old boy in a bear hug, grabbing her buttocks and kissing her on the forehead at a CTA bus stop in Wicker Park.
A month later, he allegedly carried out a nearly identical attack on a 23-year-old woman at the Garfield Green Line station. Prosecutors said he told her he had the right to date teenage girls because he was “royal.”
A few hours later, he tried to hug and then grabbed a 29-year-old woman at the Damen Blue Line station.
And a few days later, he grabbed a 21-year-old woman’s buttocks and breasts, then licked and kissed her face after she refused to hug him while she was on a break from a donut shop near the Damen Blue line, prosecutors said .
Records show Cook County Judge Dennis Porter ordered Buckner to a secure state treatment center about a year later. Porter found Buckner not guilty by reason of insanity on May 8, 2019. He was released on December 29, 2020.
In the weeks before the 2017 misdemeanor charges were filed, Buckner was charged three times with misdemeanor misdemeanor disorderly conduct for inappropriate behavior toward women in the Loop. Prosecutors have dismissed all cases, but court records do not explain why.
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