A University freshman was arrested Wednesday morning for threatening his roommate’s friend with a knife in a Bailey Hall room.
The 18-year-old student was taken to Hennepin County Jail after being arrested for assault with a dangerous weapon. He was released pending further investigation that could lead to charges, police said.
The incident occurred in a four-person room at Bailey Hall where the suspect and three others lived. The suspect’s roommate, College of Liberal Arts freshman Christian Valencia, 19, and two friends were present during the incident.
Sometime after 1:30 a.m., CLA freshman Gene Ward, one of Valencia’s friends, made a derogatory comment about the suspect’s girlfriend.
The suspect asked Ward to apologize and take back what he had said. Ward ignored the suspect’s requests.
“The whole time I didn’t know if he was playing or not,” Ward said. “I just tried to ignore him, and put it behind me.”
But the suspect then approached Ward, who began removing his necklace in case he needed to fight, Valencia and Ward said.
“All of a sudden Will (another friend) started yelling, `He’s got a knife’ at the top of his lungs,” Valencia said.
At this point, Ward said, the suspect flipped open a knife and pointed it at Ward’s face from about four feet away. Ward then ran down the hall, but returned to see what had happened to his friends.
The suspect again put the knife to his face, as the other friend ran out of the room yelling in an attempt to wake people up. Eventually the suspect was brought to the Bailey Hall office and police were called.
“We sort of found it funny,” said Valencia. “I am from New York City, and I thought I left this back in the city.”
Ward said, however, that things could have turned out differently.
“After it happens, when you sit back and look at it, that was very serious,” he said.
In other police news:
ù Minneapolis Police officers arrested a Brooklyn Park man after he assaulted a University student at a party early Sunday morning.
Robert Engles, 21, assaulted University sophomore David Hyttel at a party in the Como neighborhood, according to police reports. When the owner of the house came out, he saw Engles punching and kicking the victim.
When police arrived, they confiscated kegs of beer from the premises and issued tags to three of the hosts for minor consumption and for throwing a disruptive party.
One of the house’s occupants, a University senior, was arrested and taken to Hennepin County Jail for distributing to minors and for a disruptive party. He was released without charges.
Hyttel was taken to Hennepin County Medical Center, and Engles was booked at Hennepin County Jail for fifth degree assault and outstanding warrants for disorderly conduct and obstructing the legal process. Engles was released Oct. 12 on $100 bail.
Hyttel said three people were kicking him, and that a broken nose prompted him to seek maximum charges.
“When I was getting kicked I remember thinking, `If I get kicked one more time, I am going to die here,'” he said. “If it was a fair fight or something, it wouldn’t be too big of a deal, but what they did was wrong.”
ù University Police officer David St. Cyr arrested a 29-year-old Minneapolis man for trespassing inside Coffman Union on Oct. 5. The man has been cited for trespassing on University facilities in the past.
According to the police report, the suspect has been in the country since 1989 using a student visa. The report states that the suspect informed Hennepin County Adult Assistance Agency that he has never been a student at the University.
University Police contacted officials at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, who verified that the visa may be invalid.
The suspect was turned over to Immigration and Naturalization Service officials for possible deportation. Officials at INS could not locate the man in their logbooks, and could not verify whether he had been deported.
