U.S. man ordered to leave Canada after potential child-luring incident in Nanaimo
CTV
Nanaimo RCMP say a potential child-luring incident was averted after a 53-year-old man came to Vancouver Island to meet with a young girl.
Police say they were called to Robins Park in Nanaimo, B.C., on June 29 after two city workers saw the mismatched pair speaking together around 1:30 p.m.
"The witnesses said that the two were siting very close to each other in the bleachers and by their interactions and body gestures it did not appear that it was a father-daughter relationship," said RCMP in a release Monday.
After the city workers observed the man speaking with the girl – who is 11 to 15-years-old, police say – the workers phoned police.
Mounties then came to the park to speak with both the man and the girl.
The youth told police that she met the man through a social media platform called V-sing, a karaoke app that lets people share videos of themselves singing and chat through a private messenger.
The girl told police that she thought the man was 25 and that they had been speaking for about nine months, including through daily FaceTime calls on her cellphone.
The youth told police that the pair were "nothing more than good friends," and when police spoke with the man he said the same thing.
However, while the man claimed the two were only friends, police say "he did not deny that his intentions could be seen as being sexual in nature."
