The New Westminster School Board is alerting parents to a couple of recent suspicious incidents of strangers approaching elementary school aged students.
On June 22, Al Balanuik, assistant superintendent of schools, sent a letter to parents reporting an incident from a Herbert Spencer Elementary field trip the previous day in which a strange man may have been gathering video footage of students.
According to a Herbert Spencer teacher who was on the field trip, about 60 students were lining up for ice cream at a store on Sixth Street when the man approached on a bicycle. The teacher told the man he could go to the front of the line instead of having to wait for all 60 students to be served but the man just sat on his bicycle outside the store entrance.
"I then realized he was holding an iPhone in his left hand. I watched him for about a minute, expecting him to take a photo. However, he did not press any buttons on his phone. I came around to look at the screen of his phone and realized that he was in video recording mode and taping the kids," the teacher wrote in the letter. The teacher tried to intervene and the man denied that he was recording, slipped by the teacher, and rode off.
The man is described as being about 5'10, 175 pounds in his early to mid-40s with shortly cropped grayish hair. He was wearing a dirty brown or grey baseball cap, a red shirt and light blue jeans.
The following day, a man of a similar description was spotted by a crossing guard near a cross walk. The guard asked the man if he was lost to which he replied, 'No' and rode off. He showed up again the next day but disappeared before the guard could take a picture of him.
New Westminster Police Sgt. Gary Weishaar said the incident is under investigation. Anyone with information on the incidents is asked to contact New Westminster Police Service at 6045255411.
