April Mead went for a walk Friday afternoon on the Prairie Park Trail, like she has done dozens of times, never expecting her pleasant afternoon stroll would end with her calling 911 and hiding in a ditch.

It a little after 5 p.m. when Mead parked her car at the Prairie Park Fishery off Otis Road SE, she said. Her plan was to walk about halfway around the lake and turn around.

“It’s a 1.8-mile loop around the lake, and walking that can take about 45 minutes to an hour,” she said. “Since the sun was going to set around 6:15, I decided I would just do an out-and-back walk so I could be back at my car before dark.”

This walk isn’t unfamiliar to Mead. The 46-year-old Cedar Rapids resident said she’s walked that trail “many times” and it’s not unusual for her to walk alone.

The first stretch of her walk went smoothly, but at the halfway point, that changed.

“I was nearing the connector trail, which connects to the Sac and Fox Trail, when I saw four teenage boys — three on bicycles and one on foot — coming off the connector trail and onto the trail I was on.”

From that point, Mead said the boys played a “cat and mouse game” with her. They’d follow her, then race ahead of her, then come back and follow her some more, all while calling her names and yelling “stupid things” at her, she said.

“They never touched me,” Mead said, “but they never got tired of yelling stupid things at me.”