A 47-year-old man was sentenced to more than 29 years in prison today after being convicted in San Francisco Superior Court for three carjackings and robberies of young women in the city, according to District Attorney Kamala Harris’ office.
David Perryman, a homeless man, was arrested on April 22, 2005, for a series of carjackings that occurred over a 17-day period that month. He was sentenced today to 29 years, eight months in state prison, near the maximum allowed by law, according to the district attorney’s office.
“The sentence handed down today reflects the gravity and terror of the violent street crimes committed by this defendant,” Harris said. “San Francisco will be a safer place with Perryman behind bars for the next three decades.”
In all three carjackings, Perryman targeted a locked vehicle parked on a street with a young woman inside and the engine running, according to the district attorney’s office.
He would then hurl a heavy concrete utility cover at the passenger side window to shatter it, and then dive in the window and beat the female victims while shouting crude and misogynistic epithets at them, according to the district attorney’s office.
After each victim left her respective vehicle, Perryman drove off with the vehicles, along with the purses and belongings of the women.
After Perryman’s arrest, two of the three victims identified him as the suspect from photo spreads. The steering wheels of the vehicles were swabbed for DNA and proved to be a match of the defendant, according to the district attorney’s office.
Although the third victim could not identify the defendant, and her car had been returned to her before DNA testing had been done, the district attorney’s office charged Perryman with the third set of counts given the identical nature and unique signature of the crime.
Perryman’s trial did not start until March of this year because of a variety of legal challenges to the charges. The trial lasted less than a month, and resulted in six felony convictions and one misdemeanor conviction on April 9, according to the district attorney’s office.
