Police are investigating a suspicious male following a complaint from a concerned mother at the Yellowknife Aquatic Centre on June 5.
"RCMP members are attempting to identify the unknown male through CCTV," said media relations officer Julie Plourde, referring to security cameras. She added that this is the only complaint police have received since the aquatic centre's opening.
Marina Perreault-Plante told NNSL Media that she was the one who alerted the police.
"As a parent, my 'mother's intuition' was [that] this is not safe. Something is wrong,'" said Perreault-Plante.
She explained that her seven-year-old daughter, a student at K’alemi Dene School, was on a trip to the aquatic centre when the incident occurred. There, Perreault-Plante said a man had been staring at her daughter the entire time she was swimming. The daughter also noticed that, she added.
That man, according to Perreault-Plante, was not a parent of any of these students, nor did he appear to have any children of his own. He had been sitting in the aquatic centre for more than an hour, she added.
Perreault-Plante said she made a complaint to city staff about the man. She said staff told her that since the waiting room is a public space, they cannot ask him to leave.
That, Perreault-Plante said, wasn't enough to shake the feeling of some potentially predatory behaviour, so she called the RCMP.
When the police arrived, they met with city staff and Perreault-Plante, she said.
"I could hear the staff telling the police he's there every day for hours," she noted.
When RCMP spoke to her, she said an officer told her they can't do anything unless city staff have asked the man to leave.
"Why does he need to be there if he's not a paying patron? If he's not one of the parents of the kids that are swimming?" she asked rhetorically.
NNSL Media has contacted the city for comment on this situation.
