Police say they are looking for a suspect after a woman was brazenly sexually assaulted while mowing her lawn in Aurora over the weekend.
York Regional Police say a man ran up to the victim from behind and pulled down his shorts. He then grabbed her and pushed her towards him, investigators said.
The incident was captured on surveillance camera video released by police on Thursday in hopes of identifying the suspect.
The footage also shows the woman, 47, appearing to confront the young man, who then walks away from the area.
Investigators say it happened at around 3 p.m. on Saturday on Stone Road in Aurora, near Bayview Avenue and Wellington Road.
York police Const. Laura Nicolle said the suspect and the victim are not known to each other and they didn’t have an interaction prior to the attack.
“It’s certainly a shocking type of an incident,” she said. “This a woman who is mowing her lawn, you know, engaging in behaviour I think we all do on a Saturday afternoon, and it seems very unexpected.”
Nicolle said it was too early to speculate on what possible charges the suspect could face, but police are investigating the incident as a sexual assault.
Officers are asking anyone with information or surveillance camera footage to come forward.
“We’re really hoping either some people may have been witnesses, may have saw this person leaving the area and saw where he might have gone,” Nicolle said. “Or that somebody recognizes who he is. Or that he himself does the right thing and essentially turns himself in.”
With files from Katherine Ward, Global News