Multiple women have been stalked and assaulted near a certain Toronto intersection
At least three women were either stalked home, sexually assaulted, or both, along the same short strip of one Toronto street during a four-day-long stretch that began late last week, according to police, and investigators believe that there may be more victims.
Toronto Police say they were first called to Victoria Park Avenue between Eglinton Avenue and St. Clair Avenue East for a “suspicious incident” around 6 pm on Thursday, January 12.
“It has been reported that a woman was walking home and noticed a man following her very closely,” reads a news release published by police on Wednesday, alerting the public to a sexual assault investigation.
“The woman crossed the street, and the man continued to follow her. When the woman arrived home, the man walked up to her front door and tried the handle.”
Police say the man fled eastbound toward Victoria Park from Yardley Avenue. He is described as “brown, approximately 18 years old, wearing glasses and dark clothing.”
News Release – Sexual Assault Alert, Victoria Park Avenue and Sunrise Avenue area, Man Wanted Images releasedhttps://t.co/DSbSokzp13 pic.twitter.com/5Oyxo8lu8D
— Toronto Police (@TorontoPolice) January 18, 2023
The next day, Friday, January 13, police were called to the intersection of Victoria Park and Eglinton around 8:50 pm.
“A woman boarded a westbound TTC bus on Eglinton Avenue East,” reads a separate sexual assault alert pertaining to this incident. “A man who was already on the bus approached the woman and sexually assaulted her.”
Then, on Monday, January 16, at approximately 6:30 pm, police responded to another call for a sexual assault in the area of Victoria Park Avenue and Sunrise Avenue.
In this case, police say that “a woman was walking home and noticed a man walking behind her.”
“The man followed the woman until she neared her home,” reads the news release, which also contained details of the first assault on January 12. “The man approached the woman and sexually assaulted her.”
News Release – Sexual Assault Alert, Eglinton Avenue East and Victoria Park Avenue area, Man Wantedhttps://t.co/GZcurjQlhj pic.twitter.com/QbFr4ZgGCg
— Toronto Police (@TorontoPolice) January 18, 2023
It is not clear if the same suspect is behind all three cases, but police believe that at least two (the first and third) “may involve the same man.”
Whatever the case, it’s a good idea for anyone in and around the intersection of Victoria Park and Eglinton Avenue (adjacent to several major shopping plazas) to keep an eye out for suspicious behaviour.
Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 416-808-4100 or Crime Stoppers anonymously.
While suspect images have been released for all three cases, two of them are basically potato quality.
The other, from the January 13 assault, purports to show a suspect around 5’10” with a slim build “in his late 30s,” wearing a black jacket, blue shirt, black pants and brown dress shoes.
It’s hard to say if this is the same man as the other two (because of the potato thing), but it’s of note that ages can be hard to pin down. People who witnessed the fatal swarming death of a homeless man in downtown Toronto last month initially thought that the suspects were in their late 20s or early 30s.
As we now know, all eight of the accused in that case are teen girls — two of them 16, three of them 14, and three of them only 13 years old.