St. John's, N.L. — A former taxi driver who sexually assaulted female passengers while on duty two years ago has had another 22 months added to an already lengthy jail term.
Lulzim (Leon) Jakupaj — who is already serving a four-year prison sentence for breaking into a female passenger’s home in May 2016 — was given another prison time Wednesday in another case at Newfoundland Supreme Court in St. John’s. The sentence will be served consecutively with his first.
He will also have his name listed on the national sex offender’s registry for the rest of his life.
The 34-year-old was convicted in January of two counts of sexual assault as a result of incidents that also happened in the spring of 2016 when he was on duty as a driver with City Wide Taxi.
Jakupaj assaulted the first woman after picking her up downtown and driving her to her home in Paradise. After pulling into her driveway, he grabbed her by the back of the neck and forcibly kissed her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth. The woman, 24, pushed him away and got out of the car, and Jakupaj drove away.
He assaulted the other woman, 19, after driving her and a group of her friends home to Mount Pearl after a night out, then inviting himself in. The woman was coming out of a basement bathroom when Jakupaj pinned her against the wall, forcibly kissed her, pressed his forearm across her throat, touched her outside her clothes and pulled her pants partly down.
During his sentencing hearing in late March, prosecutor Dana Sullivan had argued for a prison term of between 2 ½ and three years and a lifetime sex offender registration for Jakupaj, who abused a position of trust, she told Justice Rosalie McGrath. Both young women had relied on Jakupaj to get them home safely, she said.
Defence lawyer Amanda Summers had argued for a total jail sentence of between six and 20 months, noting Jakupaj is seeing a psychiatrist and working as a garbage collector in prison.
Jakupaj, who is a Canadian citizen but grew up in war-torn Kosovo, served as a child soldier for three years and came to Canada in 2007, Summers said. He had no criminal record until last spring, when he was convicted of the break-in. In that incident, Jakupaj had given a 22-year-old woman a ride to Kilbride from downtown. Minutes after she went inside the home, he followed her and was caught by her ex-boyfriend, who noticed him peeking in through the bedroom’s French door.
Meanwhile, Jakupaj has appealed that conviction on the grounds that Justice Raymond Whalen disliked him and “chose to overlook issues with the Crown case, such as identity of the accused and the timeline of events.”
There’s been no date scheduled yet to hear the appeal.
