Voyeur bolts after using up-skirt cam

Photo / Thinkstock

A man has been reported to police after apparently using a foot-camera to secretly film up women's skirts at the Haumoana Market on Sunday.

The covert recording was discovered by Napier woman and annual market-goer Colleen Gray, after she tripped on a man's foot while stepping back from a stall near the main entrance to the market at Haumoana's Memorial Park.

"When I looked down to make sure I didn't do it again," she told Hawke's Bay Today, "the man's foot was to the side of me and I noticed he had a device of some sort attached to the laces at the toe of his shoe."

"It took me a moment to process that it was actually a camera and the creep had been taking pictures up my skirt," she said.

"Unfortunately he realised at that point that I had noticed, grabbed the camera off his shoe, stuffed it in his pocket, and took off."

A police officer at the market was summoned but police were unable yesterday to confirm whether any action was being taken to identify or find the man.

Mrs Gray was able to give a comprehensive description of a man she described as Asian, with a navy-blue hat, blue "knitted" polo shirt with red diagonal stripes but no logo, dark trousers and black "sneakers" with yellow-and-black laces.

It didn't turn Mrs Gray off the market day, which attracted an estimated 15,000 people, but she said it had been "somewhat soured" by the disturbing event.

"You feel violated."

However, she said the Haumoana Market Day was a "great family day out and I will be back again next year". But she would "certainly be paying more attention to who is around me".

Hawke's Bay has a notorious place in up-skirt camera voyeurism, dating back to the internationally quoted case of classic-cars buff David Overend in 1997.

He was apprehended having photographed up the skirts of more than 2000 girls at large public events. He apparently cut a hole in a toe of a shoe in which he hid what was described as a "pin-hole" camera. He was sentenced to 21 months' jail.