A man wearing only underwear broke into three second-story rooms in Coronado Hall last Tuesday night and touched two female residents while they slept.
UNMPD Spokesman Robert Haarhues said the police have a suspect. If convicted, the suspect will be charged with criminal sexual contact and burglary.
Katie Dedman, a third resident on the second floor, was abruptly awakened by the underwear-clad man at 3:42 a.m.
“I woke up because I felt my bed moving and saw him standing, like, right here, with his hands on my bed,” she said. “And so I was like, ‘What are you doing in my room?’ and I was trying to figure out if he was playing a prank on us. He wasn’t.”
Dedman said the suspect lingered in her room long enough for her to have a conversation with him, but she did not find out enough information to aid police in their investigation.
“At some point he said, ‘Well, I’ll leave if you want me to,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I think you should go now,’” Dedman said.
According to the UNMPD police report, the suspect — who was possibly carrying a motorcycle helmet – walked into unlocked rooms on the second floor of Coronado Hall. The report states that the man touched the breast of one woman and the knee of freshman Jordan Gillespie.
The Daily Lobo does not name victims of criminal sexual contact without their consent.
Gillespie said she locked her door before she went to sleep but her roommate may have left it unlocked when she left later. The suspect then entered her room and awakened her as he touched her knee.
“I yelled, ‘Hey, what the f***!’ And he ran,” she said.
Gillespie told police she did not see the suspect’s face or follow him as he fled.
“We call him ‘the creeper,’” Gillespie said.
The report goes on to detail an instance of theft. Freshman Megan Robinson returned to her room around 9 a.m., having not slept there the previous night. Robinson told police her television had been moved and was damaged, and there was a motorcycle helmet in her room.
Dedman said she and her fellow residents have no idea who the perpetrator might be.
“All we know is that he rides a motorcycle and is really, really creepy,” she said.
All of the rooms the man entered had unlocked doors, a condition that Dedman said has since been remedied.
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“I always felt like we were safe, but now that I know that that’s possible, we keep our doors locked,” she said. “We’re actively keeping ourselves safe, so I think it’s probably a really good thing.”
Dedman said police took fingerprints from the foot of her bed and called her in to identify photographs. She was unable to identify the perpetrator in the photographs, she said.
Haarhues said UNMPD often responds to unauthorized individuals in the dorms despite locks on all the perimeter doors.
“We always find people in there,” he said. “People walk in and let people in behind them. It wouldn’t be hard to get in there.”
As a result, Haarhues recommends securing individual rooms in case of a break in.
“People need to be more aware now that this is going on,” he said. “They need to lock their doors.”
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To report a suspicious character, call UNMPD at 277-2241.*
