A Sunday stroll on the seawall in Yaletown took a terrifying turn for a Vancouver mother and her baby after a random verbal attack by a man left her shaken to the point she is planning to leave the city.
Global News has agreed to withhold her identity over safety concerns and refer to her as Anna.
Anna says she was pushing her one-year-old’s stroller near the seawall by Cambie Bridge and the marina around 8:45 a.m. on July 28, when a man came up behind them.
“He was screaming and yelling threats and obscenities, but he was yelling them to himself, as if he was having a fight with someone inside his own head,” Anna said.
She says she decided to cross the street, but the man followed, and his obscenities became more pointed towards her.
“Then he started to yell, you f –ing b—. You think I can’t catch you? I can f—ing catch you, you f –ing b—,” she said.
Anna says she yelled for help and ran down a ramp onto the seawall where bystanders intervened and surrounded her and her child.
“Another person with a stroller was also there, and he walked to the corner to let the police know what was happening,” she said, adding the suspect went over to this second person, yelled at him and kicked him.
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She says police took the suspect into custody within minutes of both incidents.
“I feel shaken to my core because I had the baby with me. And what would have happened if he caught me? I am so scared,” Anna said.
Const. Tania Visintin with the Vancouver Police Department confirmed the suspect was taken into custody but has since been released.
Anna says police told her that nothing the man did to her was illegal and it was unlikely anything else that happened would result in charges.
However, the file remains under investigation, according to Visintin, and officers are working to see if charges can be recommended to Crown counsel.
Visintin says the suspect was also allegedly involved in two other incidents the same day.
When asked if VPD is seeing an increase in similar incident in Yaletown, Visintin says it’s “something we’re seeing all over the city.”
“This speaks to a greater issue, a greater mental health issue, beyond policing,” she said.
In March, VPD Chief Const. Adam Palmer said despite some high-profile attacks, stranger assaults in Vancouver had declined by half year-over-year in the first two months of 2024 and violent crime in general also decreased.
However, for some such as Anna, the statistics may not feel as real following Sunday’s incident.
This is not the first time she says she has seen people in the area talking to themselves and yelling. After this latest incident, however, she says she does not want to walk in that area again and that the family is moving out of Vancouver.
“I don’t understand why these people who are experiencing a mental health crisis are not in facilities getting help,” she said.
“They’re going to hurt themselves or they’re going to hurt others, and I can’t comprehend why we’re just letting humans walk around on the street in this state. They need help and they don’t need to be just left on the street to their own devices.”