Chicago City Wire

Paul Vallas, a Chicago mayoral candidate and the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), is taking aim at Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx for her lax sentencing of a man who kidnapped and assaulted a passenger in his cab.

Vallas took to social media to criticize Fox on Twitter for her decision to sentence a cab driver who entered a guilty plea to kidnapping an assaulting a passenger for three hours in Lincoln Park to two years of probation. 

“Another example of her refusal to hold criminals accountable,” Vallas said on a tweet. “Yes, same Kim Fox that (Mayor Lori) Lightfoot praised the other day as ‘our great State’s Attorney.’” 

According to CWBChicago.com, Tark Masri, received probation after pleading guilty for a count of criminal sexual abuse stemming from a 2015 case in which he sexually assaulted a 23-year-old woman who had fallen asleep in the back of his cab. The website noted that the stories of the victim and her friends, who Masri had dropped off earlier in the evening, were backed up by GPS records. 

CWBChicago also reported that the case remained open until Masri was nabbed on a traffic violation, when he provided a DNA sample that led to prosecutors filing charges against him for the sexual assault.  Several Class X felony charges Masri was facing were dropped, according to the report. 

Crime has been a key point of Vallas’ campaign, according to a YouTube post announcing his campaign. He noted schools aren’t prioritizing students and also took aim at property taxes and laid blame at the feet of Lightfoot, Fox and Police Superintendent David Brown.