Vancouver woman followed by stranger says she’s been threatened, but has no regrets

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A Vancouver woman who was followed by a stranger around the Tinseltown area for 40 minutes last week says she’s received dozens of hurtful messages, including one threatening one, since she shared a video of her experience online.

Jamie Coutts was running an errand when she became aware of the man’s presence on Wednesday. She pulled out her phone and recorded a seven-minute video that she posted to social media.

At one point in the video, you can see something in the man’s hand that he ends up tucking into his bag. Eventually, Coutts approaches a group of skateboarders and sits down with them. The man is seen hesitating before walking away.

Coutts says since she posted the video online, she’s received a flood of messages.

“I would say there was close to 30,000 messages,” she told CityNews.

“It’s been people kind of reaching out and thanking me because they either had similar situations. Or they have sisters, or they walk the area, and the majority of it has been exactly what I’d hoped for out of it, it’s been raising awareness,” Coutts said.

However, she estimates as many as 40 of those were “negative, hurtful messages.” They included swearing and name-calling.

Coutts says there was “one quite descriptive, threatening message,” noting she’s reported the incident and it is “being dealt with.”

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She knew there would be a big response to her going public with this incident, but it’s been difficult.

“I don’t know if mentally and emotionally, I was prepared for it at this level,” she said.

Anxiety keeping Coutts at home, but no regrets

The ordeal has left her with a heightened level of anxiety and she’s avoiding leaving her home.

“I did leave the house to go to the police station to try to identify the man at one point, but as of right now I’m kind of just taking this as some ‘Me time’ and trying to take it slowly before I kind of push myself to do that again. I’m hoping that as the weather gets nicer, my anxiety levels will kind of drop and things will start feeling a little bit better and I will be able to do those things,” she said.

But if she could do it all again, she wouldn’t do anything differently.

“I have absolutely no regrets,” Coutts said. “I think that it’s a little bit of a blessing in disguise. It was a really, really scary thing that happened. Luckily I came out unharmed, physically, and I have absolutely no regrets. I think that it’s so important right now with all the women going missing to raise awareness.”

Ove the weekend, the Vancouver Police Department said they have “identified a person of interest in the suspicious circumstance of a man following a woman in Chinatown.”

Coutts later told CityNews that she was shown a photo of the man who is in custody and she doesn’t believe it is the man who followed her.

Another Vancouver woman told us she believed the man shown in Coutts’ video had also followed her around the same area last month.

Nani Gonzalez says was leaving the Stadium-Chinatown SkyTrain station on Feb. 27 around 11 p.m. when she sensed someone behind her. She was able to avoid the man and lost him before she reached her home. She reported the incident to police on Friday.

-With files from Lisa Steacy and Ashley Burr