‘I’m sitting behind the bench’: Inside sports’ escalating stalking problem

Stalking

in Sports

On Valentine’s Day 2023, Latyr Thiaw, a 19-year-old maintenance worker living in Washington, D.C., saw a picture of UCLA women’s basketball player Kiki Rice on Instagram. He then watched interviews with her on YouTube and felt something “magnetic” between them. She reminded him of a character from “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”

In the months that followed, Thiaw sent Rice dozens of unanswered messages on social media, and he changed the background screen on his phone to a picture of her.

Then, in mid-December 2023, Thiaw flew to Los Angeles, rented a U-Haul van, parking near the UCLA campus for days and sleeping in the back.