During his run, he was caught kicking miniature Canadian flags displayed on the lawn of Sunnybrook Hospital on Remembrance Day. He was confronted, photographed, and gave the finger to those that watched him do his deed.
Photo of Runner :
Reddit :
http://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comment ... _man_seen/
Toronto Sun Article :
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/11/13/ma ... ay-tribute
TORONTO - Gerry Samson couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
With thousands of miniature Canadian flags displayed around Sunnybrook Hospital on Remembrance Day, he and his wife witnessed a man kicking them over.
“We noticed a woman talk to him and he just kept going,” Samson, 57, said Tuesday. “We were shocked at this. We were trying to appeal to his good judgment and say what he was doing was so horrendous.”
The man ended up flipping Samson and his wife the bird.
The couple were at the nearby Mount Hope Cemetery looking at the veterans’ graves prior to heading to Sunnybrook to see the flag display.
As they approached K-wing, where the hospital’s Veterans Centre is located, Samson noticed a man in jogging clothing walking through the flags and “gleefully kicking them down” around 2:15 p.m.
“We were in our car and when we caught up to him and asked him to stop, he actually said to us, ‘Stop me if you can,’ so I started snapping pictures of him,” Samson said.
The mystery jogger, accompanied by another man who didn’t participate in the act, took off, but not before unleashing his middle digit to the camera.
Later, after visiting the hospital, Samson spotted the jogger again on Bayview Ave. and witnessed him veering off the sidewalk to kick more flags down.
“I got to the intersection before he did and got my camera out and was going to start filming him, but he turned away and went into the woods,” Samson said.
Such “hateful” gestures hit close to home, he said, especially when his 30-year-old son returned home from a tour in Afghanistan five years ago.
Samson’s niece uploaded the offensive middle-finger image onto the website Reddit under the heading, “Do you recognize this coward? Toronto man seen damaging Remembrance Day tribute.”
Samson said he didn’t file a police report because he doesn’t believe there are any charges that could be laid.
But by getting his face out to media, there’s a good chance the man might be identified through “public shaming,” he said.
“We saw an elderly gentleman — maybe a vet — with young children, replanting the flags the guy had knocked down.
“That was heartwarming.”
and the running/tri communities, even in TO, are not that large. Someone will recognize him.
