A woman has spoken of her fear after a man in a white van “shouted abuse at her using a megaphone”. The 38-year-old woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said she was walking in Swansea when two men in a white van drove along the road with one shouting abuse at people.
She said they seemed to be targeting women in particular during the incident, which happened at around 1.15pm on Thursday, January 9. She said it happened on a stretch of road where students from the nearby Olchfa School often use to go to the shops.
She said: “There’s a main area along Gower Road in Killay, I was just going on a lunchtime walk [in the area], listening to a podcast and noticed a guy in like a small works van with a megaphone kind of hanging out the window. I couldn’t really hear much. All I heard was a muffled something, something ‘you woman’.”
According to the woman, the man who was shouting at her was sitting in the passenger seat, and appeared to be in his 30s or 40s, but she couldn’t get a good look at the driver. While the van itself was “quite old” she could not see the number plate due to other cars. For the latest Swansea news, sign up to our newsletter here
The woman initially ignored the incident, and didn’t think much of it. However, she said the men turned around once again before further abuse was shouted at her.
She said: “I’m not really intimidated because I get cat-called a lot. I thought nothing of it. I thought ‘that was really weird, what was that about?’ And then maybe a minute later, they come back past me again on the other side of the road, even louder, shouting something like ‘you s**g! s**g! Woman, s**g!’ And then they kind of continued down past the shops.”
She added that while they were yelling at other people, especially women, this torrent of abuse was specifically directed towards her. She said: “Other people kind of noticed, but I was the only woman walking on that side of the road and it was clearly directed at me.
“I called 101, which is obviously the non-emergency number. And they said they’ll look into it, but because they don’t have a number plate, they’re not really sure what they can do.”
She added that she felt scared afterwards, being vigilant about every car that went past her. She said: “It was really strange. After I got off the call with the police because I just continued my walk, I thought, ‘Oh do I need to be careful now?’ Walking through the park by myself in case they follow me or they see me again.”
She was also concerned about other people walking down the road. She explained: “So, I was just watching all of the cars drive past me thinking, ‘Oh my God, is that them again?’
“So I did get quite scared and I thought, ‘Well, this is bad,’ because the school is down the road. Young girls are walking past in school uniform. It’s lunchtime, there’s older people in this area, a lot of older women walking along those roads by themselves. It was quite scary. I really hoped that they would drive past again so I could get the number plate but they didn’t.”
South Wales Police said: “Officers received a report of a man having been shouting abusively at women in the area of Gower Road, Killay, Swansea at around 1:30pm yesterday (Thursday, January 9). Anyone with information as to the identity of this man should get in touch via 101, quoting incident 576 of 09/01/25.”