West Vancouver police are warning the public after two disturbing incidents involving a naked man performing lewd acts in public.
The incidents happened in the early morning hours on Sunday around Ambleside.
Samantha Collier was walking the Seawalk near Park Royal with a friend before 6 a.m., when a man wearing only an open shirt and some kind of wrap on his head approached them, masturbating.
“He was so brazen to just come right up to us. He stopped, he looked at us and then he bolted at us,” she said. “It was a horrifying experience – absolutely terrible.”
Collier’s friend yelled at the man, calling him a pervert, and told him they were calling police. The two then ran towards Ambleside and dialed 911, mid-sprint. Police arrived quickly afterwards but the suspect couldn’t be found.
When Collier spoke with police, she learned it was the second time that morning such an incident had happened. The first call came in to police around 5:30 a.m. when a resident on the 1400 block of Esquimalt Avenue, about one kilometre away, reported a man “engaged in an indecent act” outside.
When police arrived, they detained the suspect but did not have enough evidence to take him into custody or lay any charges, according to West Vancouver police spokesman Const. Jeff Palmer. The witness’s view was obscured by a fence, making it difficult to prove what was really happening. In Collier’s case, because it was so dark, she couldn’t get a clear view of the man’s face. Collier could say the man stood about five foot 10 inches, and had fair skin.
“Putting the two together, investigators are confident we can identify the male dealt with in the first incident as a person of interest in both circumstances. We’re short of what we would require to proceed with a charge recommendation,” Palmer said.
The department has made sure all their patrol team members know about the incidents, Palmer said, and anyone else who experiences something similar is asked to call 911 immediately.
Despite the two witness accounts not producing enough hard evidence for charges, police don’t recommend witnesses attempt “any action that puts themselves in any closer contact or higher risk in dealing with a criminal suspect,” he said.
“There are additional steps to be taken but we couldn’t say with certainty whether or not those would get us any closer to a charge recommendation,” he said.
Collier spread the word in a local Facebook mom’s group with more than 2,000 members because she wants others to be wary as long as the suspect remains on the loose.
“If I had been alone and seen him, I don’t know what I would have done,” she said. “I just feel it could have been so much worse.”
Collier said she would like to see some more police presence in the area as well as more lighting along the trail, something she said might have dissuaded their aggressor.
“It has changed what we do. We’re no longer going when it’s dark,” she said. “It takes a lot to shake me. This has really shaken me. I bought coyote spray from Canadian Tire.”
