A San Francisco jury has convicted Dasan Warsaialem Brown of trying to rape a lone woman on a late-night Muni bus last spring — an attack prosecutors say he committed while on probation for a prior sexual battery, and after allegedly failing to register as a sex offender when he moved to the city.

The verdict, announced Tuesday by District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, closes one of the more harrowing transit-crime cases the city has seen — an assault on the 29 line so violent the victim told police she believed she would die. But the detail that separates this case from a routine conviction announcement is one most outlets ran as a single line: Brown was not a stranger to the courts. He carried a prior sexual battery conviction out of Contra Costa County and, prosecutors allege, had dodged California's sex-offender registration requirement after relocating to San Francisco.

The attack unfolded shortly before midnight on April 26, 2025, aboard an outbound 29 bus near Winston Avenue in the Stonestown neighborhood, according to the District Attorney's Office. Brown, now 26, approached the woman and asked her for the time, then pulled her to the floor once the last of the other passengers had stepped off, the San Francisco Chronicle reported from trial evidence.

Prosecutors said Brown strangled the woman until she was nearly unconscious, removed her clothing, and attempted to rape and sexually penetrate her with a foreign object. She suffered injuries that included hair loss. The Chronicle reported that she told police she believed she was going to die.

The person who broke it off was the bus operator. The driver — an eight-year San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency employee, according to the Chronicle — witnessed the assault, ordered Brown to stop and called for help. Prosecutors said Brown kept going even after that. San Francisco State University police, whose campus abuts the route, reached the scene first and detained Brown until San Francisco police arrived and arrested him.

A jury convicted Brown on the full slate of charges the office brought: assault with intent to commit a felony, attempted rape by force, attempted sexual penetration by a foreign object, sexual battery by restraint, felony false imprisonment, assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, simple assault and two counts of misdemeanor vandalism. Jurors watched surveillance footage recorded from the rear of the bus and heard the driver testify, the Chronicle reported.

"This verdict reinforces our city's commitment to holding those who commit acts of sexual violence accountable," Jenkins said in a statement. "We are thankful for the victim's courage to come forward and trust in our office to obtain justice and accountability."

Assistant District Attorney Tanisha Gooch prosecuted the case. "The victim fought hard despite the odds and deserved justice in this case," Gooch said, per the DA's office. "I want to thank the jury for their careful consideration."

The prosecution's own account raises a question the courtroom win does not answer: how a man already convicted of sexual battery, and on court probation, was moving freely through the transit system at all. Prosecutors alleged Brown failed to register as a sex offender after arriving in San Francisco — a lapse that, had it been caught, is precisely the kind of supervision failure the registry exists to flag. The DA's office did not say publicly why the earlier probation supervision did not surface him sooner, and neither Contra Costa probation officials nor the SFMTA responded to the underlying question of what monitoring, if any, was in place.

The conviction also lands against a fraught backdrop for how San Francisco handles sexual violence. The San Francisco Standard reported this summer that the SFPD cleared just 14 percent of rape cases last year — roughly half the national rate — with kits tested quickly and cases then quietly shelved. This case ran the opposite way: a witness, physical evidence, video and a victim willing to testify carried it to a jury.

Brown remains in custody. His sentencing is set for Sept. 3.