‘My nightmare’: Kamloops university student reeling from dorm room voyeur encounter

It was a Kamloops university student’s worst fear come to life after she caught a voyeur peering into her dorm room window this month.

The 17-year-old Thompson Rivers University student is living on her own for the first time, with her parents more than an hour away, and is now hoping police catch the man who peered into her window while she balances work and school.

“This situation is like my nightmare,” she said. “When I was a child I’d always have nightmares about this happening to me and that’s why I didn’t believe it the first few times I heard somebody outside my window.”

iNFOnews.ca agreed not to identify the student, who said she reported the voyeur to campus security on the night she spotted him, then to police the next day.

Kamloops RCMP are looking for the suspect, while the university has arranged for her to move into a new, more secure residence.

More than a week of couch surfing at friends’ houses and staying with her out-of-town parents forced her to miss classes and work, while her sense of security was shaken.

“I thought I was being paranoid. I wasn’t,” she said. “I’ve definitely struggled with things like waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat or having nightmares.”

It happened around 1 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 7 when she was preparing to sleep. She started hearing strange noises at her window. At first, she chalked it up to the regular busy traffic in the area and told herself it was nothing to worry about.

“Then it got a little bit weird,” she said. “I started hearing tapping on my window… I called my friend because I thought I was crazy.”

Her friend encouraged her to check outside the window. When she did, she found a man with his face to the glass on the other side. He initially walked away, but she ran to her bathroom as he turned back.

After a while, she checked again and this time she recorded it. The man fled this time, perhaps because he saw she was recording.

“I had a mirror in my bedroom and if you looked into the window you could see my entire bedroom,” she said. “So that’s creepy and scary because I still don’t know what his intentions were or why he was at my window. No idea, which is quite upsetting.”

University security came within 15 minutes of her call, staying on the phone with her until they arrived and urging her to keep her door locked. They promised to patrol the area every 45 minutes, but it wasn’t enough for her to feel safe that night. She packed her things and had a friend pick her up, then contacted Kamloops RCMP the next day.

The following night, that friend posted the student’s video to social media.

The student didn’t know whether the man was a student, someone she knew or neither. Campus security later allowed her to view the surveillance footage so she knew what he looked like. According to her, the man was seen on multiple occasions around the student residence building looking through windows with a particular focus on hers.

“The creepy part about it for me is that I had proof that night, but I’ve had fingerprints on my windowsill pretty much since I moved into that room,” she said.

She feels safer now after getting moved to a university residence where access is more restricted like an apartment building, and where she’s not on the ground floor. She started the semester at the older McGill Residences, where each suite has a door accessed from outside in a motel-like design.

Though the suite is more costly than the previous one it provides a sense of safety due to the better security.

With support from RCMP’s victim services, she said she’s waiting for police to find the suspect while she tries to return to normal as a first-year university student.

Kamloops RCMP released an image taken from surveillance footage of the suspect this week, seeking the public’s assistance in identifying him. The student said investigators also got his finger prints from the window sill and an ear print from the window glass.

Thompson Rivers University told iNFOnews.ca it’s cooperating with police, but it wouldn’t comment on the incident itself. It said it offers various supports for students if they feel their safety is at risk.