Fears for the safety of female joggers after a spate of attacks in Auckland have led one man to form a group where joggers can find others to run with.
Reece Chippendale formed the Running Mate Facebook group yesterday after seeing posts by women too afraid to run as police seek a over four assaults on female joggers in the past few weeks. Three of the assaults were in Murrays Bay on the North Shore, the other in Massey.
"A lady was posting that she's not going to run in the morning anymore because she doesn't feel safe and I just thought that's wrong," he said.
Running Mate has already attracted more than 200 members from around New Zealand, and Mr Chippendale hopes members will list the routes they run frequently, and then contact each other to arrange times to meet up.
"Its only just so people can be safe and have some groups to run with," he said.
"I'm running with groups of people tonight, tomorrow morning, Friday morning, Saturday morning, next Friday already booked out."
"All these girls are saying that yeah, they don't want to run anymore by themselves."
Mr Chippendale had recruited another administrator for the group, Rebecca Bjarnesen-Harris, and he plans to monitor the page for people revealing too much information.
He said, in particular, they would discourage women from sharing exactly when they would be at a certain location.
Mr Chippendale said he'd heard of some scary situations faced by female joggers, and that he had offered to run with many of his female friends for peace of mind.
"Two girls I know, they started running with me because they live in the same complex as me," he said.
"They had a guy follow them back while they were running.
"He waited in the car park and when they went past, he walked alongside them to their door and just said "Hi ... I like you ... can I kiss you?"
"He was there in the morning when they left to go to work."
A spokesperson for Police said that inquiries by a sizeable and dedicated team continue into the assaults in Auckland.
The man fled on foot onto Beechwood Road at about 4.30pm on Friday, November 8. (Source: Other)
Since appeals were made for information in media and on Police 10 7, members of the public had come forward with more information, police said, and those leads are being followed up.
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