anthro_phys
Member
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2017
- Messages
- 14
- Reaction score
- 27
To me it appears he's carrying a lot inside his coat.
Big ole gun for one.
Is this guy selling drugs?
Did they see something?
I'm not all convinced this was a sexual assault.
I tend to agree with you. I have wondered if they were inadvertent witnesses. The notion that this man was stalking the girls across this trestle, rather than stalking them on the trail, seems a stretch.
It's clear that this man is a threat and an anomaly, regardless of his motive. In decades of hiking, I can't recall a single instance of a middle-aged man appearing alone on a trail. When I've encountered men this age on a trail, they've typically been (in decreasing order of frequency) walking a dog, hiking with one or more children (or the entire family), hiking with a partner (female or male) as part of a couple, or hiking with a male buddy. Men alone without a dog tend to be young and runners. YMMV, but middle-aged men typically do not hike by themselves.
The condition of the trestle itself is a flag on the sexual motive. As soon as I watched the video documenting the railway history and saw the state of the ties and the spacing between them, I realized my reaction to seeing this man on the trestle would be panic, because he is completely out of place, and there are no rails to prevent a fall--or a push--over the side. My primary fear (as a female who would never be comfortable encountering a middle-aged man alone on a trail) would be that this man might be angry or unpredictable and push me off the edge, either accidentally (through carelessness or gruffness), or deliberately. This man does not belong here, but I would consider other motives before sexual assault first. If he truly was stalking them, he chose an incredibly visible manner in which to do that, which increased his own vulnerability and lessened his chances of success.