UPDATED: University Police determined that no assault occurred and no weapons were present Thursday morning, according to a University Police email disseminated to the campus community this morning.
“The case is closed and unfounded,” the email states.
Early Thursday morning, a university student allegedly saw a man pointing a gun at him from inside an unknown vehicle parked near Stadium Drive Garage, police said.
University Police spokesman Capt. Marc Limansky said police have yet to identify the vehicle or the two passengers, but he said police are searching through Security Operations Center cameras to find footage of the parked car.
“There will be video of that spot and all of the cameras move, but I think they were sitting there long enough so the cameras should have picked something up,” Limansky said. “Make or model, the kind of vehicle, we’ll be able to get something from that video.”
The student was walking on Stadium Drive around 2:30 a.m. when he noticed the silver vehicle parked in the entranceway to the garage, Limansky said. As he got closer to the car, the student reported that he believed he saw a gun pointed in his direction from about 100 feet away.
The student went into his Ellicott Hall dorm room after the assault and looked out his window to see the car in the same spot, but facing in the opposite direction, Limansky said.
“He could see the car facing in the other direction from his window,” Limansky said. “It was parked facing inbound toward the garage when he walked past it, but then when he looked from his window, it was facing the other direction.”
The student reported the assault to police at 9:30 p.m. the following night, and Limansky said he is unsure why the victim waited 19 hours to call the police.
Limansky said the crime alert sent to students Friday afternoon was so that any students who also saw the unknown vehicle could report anything they remembered seeing, including the make or model of the car.
He added that the incident was labeled an assault despite there being no contact between the suspect and the victim because the suspect was capable of carrying out a harmful act.
“If the victim feels like he’s in danger of harm and believes the other person has the ability to carry out that attack, it’s an assault,” Limansky said. “It’s very different [from] a threat. Here we have this kid who had a gun pointed at him and he had the ability to carry out an assault. If he just displayed [it] and not pointed it at him, it would be harder to articulate that charge. You have to have the ability to do it.”
Some North Campus residents, such as freshman studio art major Rachel Handler, were shocked that the incident occurred in such a heavily patrolled area.
“Considering how much crime happens in this town, I wasn’t surprised,” Handler said. “I was a little surprised that it happened on campus in a garage and not somewhere on Route 1 considering all the security cameras they have [on the campus].”
Staff writer Nick Foley contributed to this report.
egan@umdbk.com
