An Anchorage jury convicted John Robert Douglas, 30, of second-degree sex assault Friday for his attack on a woman in a downtown elevator in May 2014, according to the Attorney General's Office in Alaska.
Police arrested Douglas mid-afternoon on May 30, 2014, after he assaulted the woman who was on her way to meet with caseworkers at the Office of Public Advocacy. Prosecutors said Douglas attacked his victim in a building including OPA offices.
State prosecutor James Fayette said the victim was a total stranger to Douglas. He argued to the jury that Douglas targeted her because she was petite and walked slowly.
The woman was alone and walking slowly because she had been partially disabled from injuries sustained in a vehicle accident, prosecutors said. Douglas entered an elevator with the woman, waited until she was alone, inappropriately groped her and then punched her in the head when she resisted. The state alleged Douglas also tried to pull the woman into a stairwell but office workers intervened.
Douglas fled on foot but was pursued by an office worker described as an ultra-marathon runner and downtown Anchorage security employees. They caught Douglas in an Alaska Court System parking garage and held him until police arrived, according to the AG's office.
Fayette called Douglas' crimes audacious and scary. The prosecutor credited the good Samaritans — who worked at an advertising agency on the first floor of the office building that also includes the state's Public Defender Agency — with saving the woman.
"I argued to the jury that the citizen intervention should make us feel pretty good about living in Anchorage — rather than a city where maybe people would have been less likely to get involved and help stop a sexual assault in progress," Fayette said.
Douglas faces 15 to 30 years in prison for the conviction. Online court records show his rap sheet includes a 2005 sexual assault in Kotzebue. He was sentenced to 15 years with seven years suspended.