A woman’s tale of surviving three violent attacks while on vacation in Vancouver, British Columbia, has captivated people on TikTok. In a story time posted on April 23, 2025, Stephanie (@Supitssteph) shared that she took a four-day sleeper train from Toronto, where she lives, to Vancouver. During her walk home from dinner one night, a random man targeted her and unleashed a series of potentially fatal assaults—and the story of how she fought back is going viral.
Her 9-minute story racked up over 485,000 likes, 31,000 comments, and over 7.6 million views in two days’ time.
Stephanie explained that she walked through Vancouver’s Stanley Park for over an hour before the attack. She described the area where the assaults took place as being a “safe, touristy area that’s typically well-trafficked.” She explained that as she walked along the Seawall, she heard a male voice say something to her. She looked over, but before she could respond, he charged.
“It just felt like he was a predator and I was prey. This wasn’t because he asked me out and I turned him down. This wasn’t because we were chatting and I was trying to get away. He locked in on me and was like ‘I’m going to kill this girl,’” Stephanie explained on TikTok.
She says a man attacked her three separate times—and she survived each one
Stephanie attributed her survival in the first attack to a bag of White Claws she bought to enjoy in her hotel room. When the man first grabbed her, she ran away, and he chased her, eventually catching her and slamming her to the ground. She stood up and used the cans as a weapon, fighting him off and escaping.
She thought she had eluded her attacker and was on the phone with 911 when he crept out of the dark and unleashed a second violent attack. He grabbed her phone away and smashed it multiple times on the ground.
Stephanie described the man’s demeanor during this second attack as “gleeful. He was taking great joy in hurting me. I just knew this person was not okay. There’s no way to ration or reason with them. Just fight.”
Stephanie’s fight for survival earned her a broken nose and other lacerations across her face, hands, and legs. She says she sustained a fair amount of her injuries during the second attack, when the perpetrator had her on her back. She fought him off with her legs, kicking him so persistently that he became frustrated and removed her shoe “because I was kicking him in the face so hard.”
How she stayed alive: White Claws, instinct, and adrenaline
After the second attack, Stephanie escaped again and was able to put a fair amount of distance between herself and her assailant before he struck a third time. This time, he concentrated his blows on her head, and Stephanie says there was a period where she briefly blacked out.
“I just kept telling myself ‘Get up, get up, get up. You’re hurt, this sucks, you’re bleeding but get up because you’re gonna f*cking die.’”
She got up a third time and escaped. She says he briefly caught up to her to attack a fourth time, but she fought him off while remaining on her feet. It was around this time that she ran into a group of people by the Westin Bayshore hotel, who, as luck would have it, were all undercover cops. They apprehended the attacker, who Stephanie says was still trying to kill her.
“If he had just turned around at any point and run off I don’t think the police ever would have caught him. Because it was a completely random attack,” Stephanie said in her video.
Stephanie thanked all the emergency services and first responder teams who helped her recover from the attack. She acknowledged that the experience was awful, but said that she was lucky because there were people who witnessed the attempt on her life, and luckier still because those people were cops “and that carries a lot of weight.”
She concluded her video, saying “I know not all women are lucky enough to get out of a situation like that and survive it… or to even be believed that this person has hurt you and attacked you.”
@supitssteph Replying to @Sarah how a completely random stranger tried to kill me #vanccouver #womenempowerment #fight ♬ original sound – Stephanie
Stephanie did not respond immediately to the Daily Dot’s request for comment via TikTok direct message.
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