A drunken 22-year-old University student who hit a woman in the head with a thrown beer bottle and attempted to walk away carrying a charcoal barbecue was arrested
early Sunday morning and taken to jail, police and witnesses said.
Lucas Orams Calderon, a history major, was arrested at East 17th
Avenue and Hilyard Street at about 2:30 a.m. after a confrontation with the Emerald’s editor in chief at the newspaper’s annual end-of-the-year party. Calderon, who was arrested on felony second-degree assault charges, was released from jail
Sunday evening.
Emerald Editor in Chief Parker Howell, a senior journalism major, said the confrontation in the kitchen started when Calderon berated the Emerald. Howell said it escalated into shoving.
Catie Hager, Howell’s girlfriend and a student at George Fox
University, said she and Howell’s roommate ran inside after hearing shouting and separated the men. She was hit with a newly opened beer bottle as she urged Howell to leave, she said.
The bottle hit the roommate’s forearm before crashing into her head, she said.
“I felt it hit, and the next thing I knew I had beer all over my face and shirt and I had a beer bottle at my feet,” Hager said.
Howell and Calderon separated.
Later Calderon refused to leave the party, despite shouts from an angry group of party-goers, Emerald News Reporter Nick Wilbur said. Wilbur said he waited as the man edged closer to an outside door, then he grabbed him by the shoulder and threw him out.
“I just got a good grip, pushed him out and slammed the door,” Wilbur said.
Wilbur deadbolted it and everybody started cheering, he said.
“He didn’t want anyone’s hands on him, but I put mine on him for the sake of everyone there,” he said.
Dan Gruber, who is dating a house resident and spends a lot of time there, said he then went around the side yard to ensure that Calderon wasn’t causing trouble when he saw the man carrying the house’s charcoal barbecue down the driveway toward the street.
“I yelled at him to leave the barbecue, and, of course, pretty quickly he turned around and threw the barbecue at me,” he said.
The men got in a shoving match before Calderon left the property, declared that he was going to call police, pulled out his cell phone and said he had just been sexually harassed, Gruber said.
Calderon was gone when police arrived, but police found him and brought Hager to identify him, Eugene Police Department spokesman Rich Stronach said. Stronach said Calderon denied any wrongdoing to the police.
A voicemail message left by the Emerald on Calderon’s listed phone number was not returned.
Hager said she intends to press charges.