A Santa Maria man is facing an eight-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to child molestation and committing a lewd act on a child at a downtown San Luis Obispo store last month.
Jonathan Oscar Davis, 48, was arrested on Saturday, Aug. 19, after a ten-year-old girl told police that he grabbed her buttocks and tried to pick her up.
"We were shopping downtown and approaching Bath and Body Works with four children and another mother and myself. The two little children went into the store first, followed by the older children and then the adults," the girl's mother told KSBY. "My oldest daughter noticed that a man cut in between the two groups of children and seemed to be following her sister."
She said her 13-year-old daughter screamed out when Davis grabbed the younger girl.
"I was able to meet him and stop him from exiting the store, have a conversation, ask him what he was doing," she said. "He responded that he was 'minding his business.' I asked him if minding his business was touching little girls. He said that 'maybe it was.'"
Davis, a registered sex offender, has three previous child molestation convictions, according to the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney's Office. He also has a conviction for first-degree burglary, which is considered a strike under California's Three Strikes Law.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on October 5, 2023.
