VANCOUVER -- Video of a man following Jamie Coutts in Vancouver's Chinatown neighbourhood has hit a nerve with other women in the city, who are recalling their own experiences of being trailed by suspicious strangers.
Emma Windsor-Liscombe told CTV News she can relate to what Coutts’ went through, and wasn’t shocked when she watched the video online.
Windsor-Liscombe said she was walking her dog downtown in 2019 when a man in dark clothes and a hoodie appeared out of nowhere.
“He started saying things that I found very inappropriate and also very disturbing and he followed me down an entire block,” Windsor-Liscombe said Tuesday, adding that he was only about a foot behind her.
“It looked like he was following me home so I did a rather circuitous route home until it seemed as though he disappeared."
Most disappointing though, Windsor-Liscombe says she felt left down by the response from police when she reported the incident.
“The person at the other end of the call, frankly, they seemed dismissive and also very patronizing and I had to push to have a case file made, which I think is shocking,” she said.
While the behaviour described in both cases is intimidating, is it illegal?
CTV News posed that question to criminal lawyer Sarah Leamon. She said the most likely charge, if an individual is caught, is criminal harassment.
“Criminal harassment captures behaviour that would make a reasonable person feel as though their safety is being threatened and that includes following behaviour,” Leamon said.
When referring to the video of Coutts being followed she added, “I think because we see this person who is repeatedly following this young woman, she’s clearly afraid for her safety to the point where she decides she's going to start filming it.”
Canada’s Criminal Code describes criminal harassment as when “someone makes you fear for your or a family member’s safety,” which can be through “repeatedly following you or someone you know.”
Most cases of criminal harassment involve ex-partners, and Leamon says examples of convictions related to strangers are rare.
In the instance of Jamie Coutts being followed by a man she didn’t know, Leamon says this could be an occasion where the legal wording is open to interpretation.
“I think there probably is a case to be made here that the conduct was so egregious and so threatening, even in a short space of time, that it could fall under criminal harassment,” she said.
Leamon also praised Coutts for capturing the interaction on camera.
“By video recording this person and capturing the evidence that would otherwise have been fleeting, that becomes a really great piece of evidence going forward, if it does go forward.”
On Saturday, Vancouver police said they had arrested a man who was a “person of interest” in Coutt’s case. But when called to identify him, she said it was not the man who followed her.
“The majority of people think that he is now caught, nobody is kind of keeping their eye out anymore,” Coutts told CTV News over the weekend.
On Tuesday, police issued a statement to CTV News saying they were still investigation the case and they “100 per cent take these files seriously.”
Anyone who feels unsafe should call 911.
