Suspect
A man suspected of assaulting two students in a University residence hall room Sunday morning and returning hours later armed with a gun has not been located by police. Officers have increased patrol in the campus area in hopes of finding him.
Carlos Alberto Valencia-Torres, 23,
allegedly entered a Willcox Hall residence
in the Bean Complex at approximately
6 a.m.., found a group of students playing card games and “wanted to more or less hang out with them,” Eugene police officer Larry Crompton said.
Valencia-Torres did not know the students but had lived in the room during fall term while he was earning his high school diploma through a University program, Crompton said.
“That’s what brought him to the room is just being familiar with the hall,” Crompton said.
Crompton said when the students asked Valencia-Torres to leave he became “very uncharacteristically angry for the situation” and punched one of the students in the face.
Crompton said other students tried to intervene but were also
assaulted and the hall’s residence
assistant had to break up
the fight.
Physical altercations are common in the residence hall, Crompton said, particularly on the weekends, and “I’m assuming that’s what (the RA) was expecting, and the unexpected happens where this guy returns with a gun.”
Crompton said Valencia-Torres returned to the hall around 9 a.m. armed with a gun and in search of the assault victims. The victims were not in the hall at the time and Crompton said a resident heard commotion in the hallway and saw Valencia-Torres with a gun.
Bean Complex Director Heather Dumas said she heard about the incident through second-hand accounts and launched an investigation, questioning residents and tracking down witnesses.
“We weren’t notified of the gun being in the hall until close to
11:30 p.m.,” Dumas said.
Crompton said police were contacted as soon as a concrete account of what happened had been obtained, which he said didn’t take place until about 20 hours after the incidents occurred.
“By the time they were able to confirm enough and make a report it was one o’clock in the morning,” Crompton said.
The Eugene Police Department issued a security alert and the Department of Public Safety posted safety bulletins around Bean Complex to inform students of the incident and urge them to keep an eye out for
Valencia-Torres.
Director of University Housing and Vice President for Student
Affairs Mike Eyster said safety
bulletins were not posted in the other complexes because “based on what happened, we don’t have any reason to think that he would go
to some other room in some
other building.”
EPD and University Housing would not release the names of the students who were assaulted, citing student privacy laws.
University student Nathan Corliss, the Willcox Hall RA who broke up the early-morning altercation, said he could not comment on the incident.
Freshman David Hamburger lives in Willcox Hall and said the assault woke him up, but he said he assumed it was “just drunk people.”
“I was going to tell them to be quiet, but there were a ton of them,” Hamburger said.
Freshman John Hughes said he heard most of the early-morning altercation while in his residence hall room, which he said is just down the hall from the room where the incident occurred.
“I didn’t want to go out there because it sounded like people were getting slammed into walls,” Hughes said.
It is not known how Valencia-Torres was able to enter the residence hall twice, but Crompton said he suspects another resident let him in thinking he was doing someone
a favor.
Eyster said Willcox Hall’s locks have been changed just in case Valencia-Torres had a key.
Eyster said it is likely that a resident let Valencia-Torres into the hall, and he said if housing officials are able to determine who it was, he or she will be punished accordingly.
Students who let strangers into the residence halls may think they’re doing someone a favor but in actuality “they’re endangering the lives and safety of everybody in the building,” Eyster said.
Dumas said she hopes residents will learn from the incident and be more cautious about who they let into the halls.
“This situation has definitely raised safety awareness,” Dumas said.
