Photo by: Scott Casey
Three days before the March 25 attempted sexual assaults on University of Denver students, a female student may have met the suspect late one night as she walked down High Street. Campus Safety and Denver Police are still uncertain if the two suspects are the same person.
It was a chilly spring night sometime after 12:30 a.m. on March 22. When Katie, a third-year student who wished to remain anonymous, was walking toward Nelson Hall on High Street after visiting friends in Centennial Towers.
She was nearing Nelson Hall when a man yelled, “Hey girl, want a ride?”
Katie turned and saw a man sitting in a darkened, late 1990s, Jeep Grand Cherokee. She didn’t notice anything unusual about the vehicle. It was the type of dirty car she normally would have seen but not noticed. There weren’t any distinguishing marks or bumper stickers.
Through the window Katie noticed that the man was holding a bucket hat in his right hand, resting it on the steering wheel, leaving his dark hair bare. His white T-shirt stood out in the darkness. She couldn’t tell how tall he was but noticed his average frame.
“I just thought he was some kind of weirdo who was probably drunk,” Katie said.
Shrugging off the incident, she quickly said “No,” and walked briskly into Nelson Hall.
It wasn’t until the news broke about the rash of attempted sexual assaults later that week and the university posted flyers describing the suspect that Katie decided the man who offered her a ride was the suspect. She called Campus Safety and was contacted by Denver police to file a report.
Katie, like many other female students at DU, are thinking twice about being out alone at night. She thinks that she will try to be more cautious in the future, but doesn’t think she will catch the Safe Ride back to Nelson from her evening class. She usually walks back in the same direction as the rest of the students in her class, and would rather walk near the other students than wait in the dark for Safe Ride.
Other students at DU are adjusting their lifestyles to be safer.
Junior George Buck said he plans to walk with his girlfriend to the gym at night because he worries about her walking alone.
Transfer student Lauren Sarnosky compared the recent events to her experiences at the University of New Hampshire last year. She said rapes happened every month at UNH and were thought to be a common thing. It was never on the news.
“I think DU and the news did a good job making it public,” Sarnosky said.
Many students have taken advantage of the safety whistles that Campus Safety is distributing at the front desks at the resident halls and its office and other devices to protect themselves. Nelson Hall has one whistle left. Halls ran out on March 27. Towers ran out the day after it received the whistles, and Johnson-McFarlane has gone through two batches so far. Campus Safety is ordering more to meet the demand.
The bookstore has noticed an increase in its sales of pepper spray and personal alarms.
According to Dave Beaumont, the supply buyer for the bookstore, during the week after the assaults, the bookstore sold two dozen pepper sprays and three to four personal alarms. Normally the store sells only a few cans of pepper spray. He recently placed an order for three dozen more units of pepper spray, and moved the displays near the cash registers.
In an unrelated incident March 25, three fraternity men broke into Gamma Phi Beta they turned themselves in to Campus Safety soon after they learned about the assaults.
Don Enloe, director of Campus Safety, said he thinks the men realized that their actions were being connected to the assaults and wanted to avoid being associated with the serious nature of the assaults.
One student from Beta Theta Pi and two from Lambda Chi Alpha reportedly broke into the sorority house through the kitchen window.
Enloe said the men were going to steal the sorority’s composite photo as a prank, but fled the scene after the house’s alarm sounded.
Natalia Fletcher, a sorority member, said the men made off with a punch bowl from the kitchen, and that their punishment was still being decided.
