A male unaffiliated with the University was caught trying to touch several females while they slept in their rooms in Thurston Hall early Friday morning. The male entered five different Thurston dorm rooms between 4:30a.m. and 5 a.m., and attempted to initiate sexual encounters, according to a Metropolitan Police report of the incident.
One female student, who lives on the eighth floor, reported that the man woke her up by trying to kiss her, and “attempted twice to place his hands down the front of her shorts,” according to the police report. The female began screaming and the man ran across the hallway to another room, where he woke up another girl, who said he told her he had met her at Josephines, a popular nightclub.
“That’s when I knew I didn’t know him — I’ve never been to Josephines,” the female student said. “Then he grabbed my head and tried to kiss me.”
The girl said after he left her room several students from the room across the hall grabbed him and brought him down to the security desk. The girl was able to positively identify the intruder, who was handcuffed in the lobby of Thurston, and he was arrested, according to the police report.
The student said she and her roommates had accidentally left the door unlocked, which was how the man was able to gain entry to the room. According to a GW Infomail sent out Friday afternoon, a male student signed the man into Thurston Hall, but was seen leaving the building soon after without the man, leaving him unaccompanied in the residence hall.
The female student said the man told her he was a University of Maryland student who had been at GW since Monday visiting his friend on the 7th floor. It is not clear whether he was lying.
The Infomail urged students not to allow people they do not know into residence halls, and warned that “students who violate the security protocols, such as the sign in procedure, may face serious consequences through the Office of Student Judicial Services, up to and including suspension or expulsion from the University.”
The incident is similar to a string of bizarre unlawful entries and assualts around Georgetown attributed to the “Georgetown Cuddler.” There have been at least 13 reports in the last year and a half where students woke up to find a strange man in their bed.