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A Kentucky man will spend the rest of his life in prison after Dallas police linked him to a sexual assault case that went cold for more than 15 years, the Dallas County District Attorney’s office announced.
David Warren Jackson, 57, was found guilty Thursday of aggravated sexual assault.
In 2005, Jackson befriended a 23-year-old homeless woman who was among evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. One night, Jackson threatened the woman with a knife and forced her into a secluded area near the Dallas Convention Center, where he sexually assaulted her multiple times, the DA’s office said.
The woman ran to Dallas Police Department headquarters afterward and was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital for an exam. Her sexual assault kit wasn’t tested until 2020, however; a recent state audit found that DPD has a large backlog of untested kits.
The DNA on the woman’s kit matched Jackson, who had two years left on a prison sentence in Kentucky after being convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in 2008. His DNA also was also linked to two other sexual assault cases, but those victims had died, the district attorney’s office said.
Jackson was extradited from Kentucky to Dallas in November ahead of his trial.
“This was an unspeakable violation that occurred to a young woman at the lowest point of her life,” prosecutor Leighton D’Antoni said in his closing remarks.
“The defendant is counting on you not to care about a homeless woman being raped. I am counting on you to tell the Defendant, and to tell everyone, that in Dallas County, we will do whatever it takes to bring justice for victims of sexual assault, no matter who they are,” he said. “We will do this, even if it takes 6,095 days.”