A woman went viral on TikTok after she filmed a man allegedly following her during her run for more than a mile and a half.
The video was uploaded by TikTok user Lacie (lacie_kraatz). She began the clip by stating how she recorded the video so that “women are a little bit more aware.” The content creator pointed to a man a few feet behind her. Then, she dove into her story.
During her run, she said, the man was ahead of her, running in the opposite direction. Then she says things got suspicious: He allegedly “waited” and “stopped in the middle of the trail just to get behind” her. Why did Lacie suspect the man of stalking her? Because as soon as she resumed her walk, he was “in front of” her, peeking around.
To give the man the benefit of the doubt, she decided to walk on a different trail. Yet, she says the man continued to follow her. She says that she even blew by the crosswalk at a red light to create distance, and he allegedly followed suit. In the clip, the man seems to be running behind her as she speeds up. She later films him in a parking lot apparently hovering nearby, though his face is not recognizable.
“If for a minute, you feel like someone’s following you, odds are it’s probably happening,” she concluded in the video.
@lacie_kraatz #foryou #ladies #awareness ♬ original sound – Lacie
Lacie says she had to cut her run short because “creepy men just had to be creepy [expletive] men today.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Lacie via TikTok comment and direct message for more information. The video amassed 3.4 million views as of the weekend, where female viewers shared what they would’ve done in that situation.
In a follow-up video, Lacie says that she wound up walking through someone’s backyard to evade the man and that he did not see where she lived.
“I’m not patient enough for this I would have yelled at him in the park been like ‘you got a problem????’” one viewer wrote.
“I would have turned around and walked passed him and then if he turned to follow I’d turn around again, and again, and again until he got the idea,” a second shared.
“I’d report this to the police so they can keep an eye on that park – you may not be the first person to report and you can help document a pattern,” a third stated.
In addition, viewers revealed their creepy encounters with being followed.
“A man watched me walk to my car after work at 10pm and got in his car and followed me. I drove to police station. He left,” one person revealed.
“This happened to me once – saw weeks later on the news that he was arrested for rp,” a second said.
“Literally walked my dog yesterday and a man was leaving the trail as I entered then as I was leaving my dog kept looking behind us and he was there,” a third commented.
So what should you do in a similar situation? According to Safewise, these six pointers can help: “keep calm, pay attention, mix things up, go where people are, break out your phone, and call the police.”
