By Liam Reilly
@liampreilly852
March 22 marked the end of Spring Break for Springfield College students, and the day where most residents on campus moved back in to prepare for the final stretch of the semester. Most students caught up with their friends, however the first floor residents of the Living center were caught by surprise by the intrusion of a stranger into their dorms.
A man who was not a Springfield College student, faculty or staff member trespassed into several dorms of residents in the Living Center. The intruder had walked into different rooms until students who lived there had to confront him to leave. At 8:44 p.m. Springfield College Public Safety was contacted and officers arrived at the scene a minute later to find the man in a doorway of a room on the fourth floor.
After determining that the man was not a student, staff or faculty member or a guest of a student, officers detained and arrested the trespasser outside the Living Center and charged him with trespassing. Springfield College Public Safety Chief Joseph Tiraboschi spoke about the arrest.
“You try to de-escalate the situation by gathering information to credit why they’re there, or why they may shouldn’t be there,” Tiraboschi said. “We were easily able to figure out that he wasn’t supposed to be there due to not providing proper identification, not providing a real reason to be in there. Then we were able to get him out of the building without any type of escalation and for the most part, he cooperated with us besides not giving us his real name. The main thing is doing it subtly, respectfully, and also providing empathy.”
After his arrest, the man experienced a non-life threatening medical emergency and was transported in an American Medical Response vehicle to a local hospital.
“When he was in our custody, we observed him going through a medical emergency, and then we contacted AMR,” Tiraboschi said. “They were able to assist pretty quickly and get him further treatment at a local hospital. There was nothing to do with any type of use of force or by how we handled the call at all. It was something he was going through personally, and we wanted to make sure that he was okay.”
Public Safety was unable to find a motive for why the man was inside the Living Center, but determined that he lived locally. Living Center residents described the intruder as looking lost. The students were concerned for the man until he set foot into their rooms, shifting the focus of their concern to their own safety.
Resident students’ doors are usually open because they have hall mates, and they all get along,” Tiraboschi said. “They’re all friends and so when he walked into the threshold of the door, it made someone feel concerned. So luckily, they called us right away, and we got there, and we were to de-escalate the situation and be able to get them out of there as fast as possible, to make sure the students feel safe.”
No members of the Springfield College community were injured in the incident. The officers on the scene were able to assess the situation, determine who the man was and bring him out of the Living Center without anybody’s safety being put at risk.
“We’re glad that no one got hurt, there was no physical altercation,” Tiraboschi said. “There was no big scene. We talked to him, got information, and were able to remove him from the residence hall without any incident, which is the most important thing.”
Sunday night was not the first time the man trespassed on campus. Two years ago he was found going into an academic building after following a student in. The Public Safety Department has information on the man that they’ll use to look out for him if he was to attempt to come back to campus. The intruder has committed trespassing and theft crimes in the past.
Although each dorm hall is only accessible by scanning a Springfield College ID, it’s possible the man entered the Living Center after being let in by a resident who assumed he lived there. Tiraboschi recommends students to be more vigilant by locking their doors and having others scan their ID.
“It’s tough,” Tiraboschi said. “We are a very kind campus that we want to hold the door for others, and we want to be that positive help to each other. But it just goes to show a good reminder that at the end of the day, if you don’t know the person, it’s okay to have them swipe their ID to make sure they can get into the building.”
Despite the nerve-wracking situation they were in, the students whose rooms were entered by the man remained calm and immediately contacted public safety. Once the trespasser was detained, students spoke with officers to give details of what transpired when the man was entering their dorms.
“The students were the heroes in the situation,” Tiraboschi said. “There is teamwork within the community, of working all together to make sure that we’re all safe and that’s the type of thing that I look forward to as being a police chief at the college, is that we all work together to make this place safe. It takes all of us. It can’t just be public safety, it’s everyone around us – faculty, staff, students, we were all in this together to make sure that this campus is safe.”
Photo by Nick Pantages/Springfield Student