A woman who says she was traumatised after an unknown man wearing a mask approached her while she was sitting in her car is warning people to be alert to such behaviour.
The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, was in her vehicle parked on Vincent Street in Howick, about 200 metres from the intersection with Ridge Road, when the incident happened on May 30.
She was eating her lunch and had just finished talking to her husband on her mobile phone.
Two people in a light blue-coloured vehicle that had paint peeling off then drove past her heading down Vincent Street.
She says about five to 10 minutes later, at 12.45pm, the vehicle came back.
“A guy wearing a green Halloween mask parked next to my car facing in the opposite direction,” the woman says.
“He got out of the car and started walking toward me. I was really nervous.
“I had my phone in my hand so I put my arm up. I think he probably thought I was filming him, or was going to, and he backed off.”
She says the unknown man returned to his vehicle, with a woman who appeared to be aged in her 20s in the passenger seat, and drove off.
The man was wearing what she says resembled an ‘Incredible Hulk’ mask.
“It was a green latex mask and it was over his whole head. I couldn’t even see his hair.”
She believes he was also wearing jeans and a hooded top.
After the pair had left in the blue car, the woman phoned her husband back.
She returned to her workplace to tell her colleagues what had happened and two of them walked her back to her vehicle.
“I was shaking and we were looking around us,” she says.
“My husband and I went to try to find the car and then we went to the police in Howick.”
Her husband says he and his wife have been trying to work out the man’s intentions.
“What was he after? Was he trying to hurt somebody or was it to try to take a car?”
He believes it’s possible the man didn’t initially see his wife in her car until he got closer to it.
“Potentially he then eyeballed her and got back into his car and took off.
“Legally he’s done nothing wrong, but I think everybody with commonsense would know the guy is up to no good.
“Firstly, you don’t walk around with a mask on, but he also adjusted it before he got out.”
His wife says the high amount of crime being committed across the country has added to the situation.
“We feel unsafe all the time. I always read the stories in the newspaper but it had never happened to me.
“Whatever he was trying to do, it traumatised me.”
Howick Police community services supervisor, sergeant Brett Meale, says he’s received no reports of similar incidents in the local community.
People with information on the incident can report it by phoning 105.
