Downtown Vancouver's chaotic Thursday: Alleged stairwell masturbation and stranger attacks

Sucker-punches and body fluids were flying in downtown Vancouver on Thursday.

After one man was arrested for a series of apparently unprovoked spitting and punching attacks on strangers, another was arrested in an unrelated incident for masturbating in the stairwell of a local mall. Charges are pending for both.

Gregory Edwin Lawrence Brumwell, 45, remains in police custody after being charged with three counts of assault. Vancouver police responded to multiple reports of a man approaching members of the public in an erratic manner, and arrested a man matching the descriptions a few minutes after the final spitting incident.

Around 9:50 a.m., a man allegedly punched somebody in the face near Seymour and Georgia Street. Throughout that morning and early afternoon, police allege that same man spat in a man’s face around Davie and Granville Street, and did the same thing to another man near Georgia and Hamilton Street.

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Later that afternoon, security at the Pacific Centre Mall found a man allegedly masturbating in a stairwell, and asked him to leave, at which point the man exposed himself. Security workers called police and followed the man out, tracking him until the VPD arrived to make the arrest.

Robert Finlay MacLeod, 51, faces a charge of performing an indecent act in public and remains in custody awaiting a bail hearing. His next court appearance is September 17.

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