Reports of men in van harassing women in Toronto’s west end

Several disturbing posts on social media over the past week report men in a car or van approaching women late at night in the city’s west end, asking for directions and attempting to lure them close to the vehicle.

In a post on Instagram, Sam Phillips described an incident that occurred near the Queen and Lansdowne area as she was leaving a store on the night of August 10.

She says a man in a white SUV approached her and asked for directions to Bathurst Street and Eglinton Avenue. When she ignored him, the man asked again. She then pulled out her phone and called 9-1-1.

“He quickly did a U-turn and went down Queen Street extremely fast,” she wrote.

She tells CityNews she has heard from several other women who has experienced something similar after she posted about her experience.

“If he was just asking for directions, he wouldn’t have gotten spooked when I took my phone out,” she says.

A post on Reddit on Sunday describes an almost identical scenario near The Queensway and Park Lawn Road.

The poster says their friend was “harassed and followed by two men” on Saturday night. In the comments they elaborate further, saying the men stopped their friend to ask for directions to Bloor Street. She said she did not know and kept walking, but they found her a few blocks down and asked again.

“They asked her to come closer to the car so they could hear her better. She got creeped out and yelled for them to leave her alone and they sped off,” says the poster.

When CityNews inquired about the reports, Toronto police responded with a public safety alert sent out on August 12 about three incidents of indecent exposure near the Trinity Bellwoods area.

Two of the incidents occurred on July 27 around 2 to 2:30 a.m. — one in the Queen Street west and Dovercourt Road area and the other in the King Street West and Sudbury Street area. The third happened on August 5 in the Dundas Street West and Bathurst Street area, also around 2 a.m.

All of the incidents follow the same pattern — in each one, a woman was approached by a man in a vehicle asking for directions.

When she agreed to show him the location on his phone, a pornographic video was playing on screen. The man then committed an “indecent act” and drove away.

In the first two incidents the man was driving an older model Honda Civic and in the third he was driving a white SUV.

Police believe the same man is responsible for the three incidents described in its public safety alert. The man is described as brown, between 30 to 35 years old, weighing 150 pounds with a slim build. He has dark hair, brown eyes and stubble.

Police say the incidents are all actively under investigation and officers on patrol have been briefed and there is “heightened awareness” about such incidents.

It is unclear if the social media reports and the police’s public safety alert are related at this time.

With files from Erick Espinosa and Maleeha Sheikh