Reynolds Mandisi Dube stalked seven teenagers and touched 14-year-old girl on the bus
A Palmerston stalker had a private collection of 150 images of school-aged girls and teenagers — with police uncovering a disturbing Google search on the man’s phone.
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A Palmerston stalker who secretly photographed teenagers and followed them home has been found guilty of “twirling” a school girl’s hair and touching her thigh on a crowded bus.
On Tuesday, Reynolds Mandisi Dube was found guilty of seven counts of stalking, alongside an aggravated assault and indecently touching the school girl on a bus.
Darwin Local Court Judge Julie Franz said Dube had stalked seven teenage girls — aged between 14 and 19 years old — taking photos of them at work, travelling on the bus and even took “selfies” outside some of their homes.
Ms Franz described the 31-year-old as a “prolific photographer”, with more than 48,000 images on his phone, habitually snapping photos “throughout the course of his day”.
But it was 150 photos of seven school-aged teenagers and young women that concerned the police.
Ms Franz said the covert photos were of the teenagers either at work or travelling to and from school, with some of his “selfies” taken while loitering outside their homes.
A photo of one of his victims — a 16-year-old girl at work — was even the screensaver for his phone at the time of his arrest.
Dube told police some of the teenage girls were his “friends”, claiming it was his victims who approached him for selfies.
“These kids, they just come up to me and are like ‘I want to be in the picture with you’,” Dube said.
“What am I supposed to do? I want nothing to do with them, they’re in school, they’re young kids but they’re coming to me.”
Ms Franz said a search of Dube’s phone revealed he Googled ‘the legal age of consent in Australia and the Northern Territory’.
Despite admitting to taking the photos, Dube pleaded not guilty to the stalking charges, maintaining he did not “intend” to scare the teenagers.
But Ms Franz said while he may not have meant to scare them, a “reasonable person” should have realised the girls would be frightened by his repeated “loitering” and the “surveilling” actions.
The youngest of his stalking victims were two 14-year-old twins, who happened to take the same bus route to and from school.
Ms Franz said for six weeks the school-aged girls complained to their mother about the actions of the ‘creepy’ stranger on the bus, but she had assumed it was “an awkward teenager” not a 31-year-old man.
The sisters were already uncomfortable around the man on the bus when the situation escalated on March 11, 2024, when one of them felt something moving her hair.
The girl assumed it was just the airconditioning or an accident, however she noticed her twin sister signalling that “something weird was occurring”.
The teenager turned around to allegedly find the stranger in the seat behind her “twirling” her hair, and he continued to fondle her ponytail for minutes.
Only a few days later, Dube sat next to her on a crowded bus and she felt three of his fingers slowly move onto her leg until they were halfway up her thigh.
The court heard the contact lasted seconds before she slapped his hand back.
“I felt really weird and scared,” she later told police.
Dube denied ever touching the girl, but Ms Franz said she was convinced by the two sisters’ evidence.
She said the contact was not the product of being “jostled on the bus”, but a “slow, deliberate and intentional touch” of the young girl.
After finding him guilty of seven stalking charges, an aggravated assault and indecent touching, Ms Franz called for a psychological report ahead of Dube’s sentencing submissions hearing on April 28.
His defence lawyer Laurence Waugh flagged since details of the stalking charges were made public Dube had been “confronted” by two men at his home, with the matter reported to police.
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Originally published as Reynolds Mandisi Dube stalked seven teenagers and touched 14-year-old girl on the bus
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