Gary Morris, a Syracuse man, was arrested Wednesday morning and charged with stalking and burglary after he entered DellPlain Hall and went into the men’s bathrooms on the eighth floor, said Department of Public Safety Chief Tony Callisto.

DellPlain residents had recently raised concerns about a suspicious man who hung around the hall, said DellPlain Assistant Residence Director Jennifer Anthony in an e-mail sent Monday obtained by The Daily Orange.

Some students reported that a man had entered men’s bathrooms in the hall on several occasions, Callisto said. Callisto declined to comment on whether Morris was the same man on all of these occasions.

Greg MacDonald, an eighth-floor resident, said that the DellPlain incidents started at the end of September. A suspicious man took the towel of another eighth-floor resident, Max Barker, while he was in the shower, Barker said. He opened the curtain before the suspect could leave with the towel, he said.

After Barker reported the incident, MacDonald said that other students said they had seen the suspect in the building before. He said he realized that the incident was not isolated to the eighth floor.

On Monday, Morris, 23, went into DellPlain after a student had opened the hall’s front door. Morris was able to make his way to the eighth floor, Callisto said.

MacDonald, a freshman aerospace engineering major, saw Morris in the men’s bathroom while he was taking a shower Wednesday morning.

‘I see this shadow right in front of my shower curtain, and I turned my head, and it was gone,’ MacDonald said. ‘Immediately I thought, ‘This has got to be the guy.”

MacDonald asked Morris, the suspect, if he was a SU student. Morris said he was a graduate student, according to a statement submitted to police and obtained by The Daily Orange. MacDonald asked to see the suspect’s SU identification card, and Morris showed him a driver’s license, the statement said.

After questioning Morris, MacDonald brought him to knock on his floormates’ doors, wanting to see if they could identify him as the stalker, MacDonald told The Daily Orange.

Dylan Nelson, a freshman sport management major, said he recognized the suspect from previous incidents. He walked away from MacDonald and Morris to call DPS. But DPS had already been notified by that point, Nelson said.

‘I got my phone, and when I was about to call, one of the janitors said he had seen (Morris) before. He said that DPS was on the way,’ Nelson said.

MacDonald, Nelson and two other DellPlain residents brought Morris downstairs to the first floor lobby and waited until DPS came.

Callisto, DPS chief, said that one of the officers had seen a suspicious man near DellPlain Wednesday morning and called for backup immediately. MacDonald and his friends had already apprehended Morris by the time DPS officers entered the building.

‘It was really student efforts that made it possible to immediately capture the suspect,’ Callisto said. ‘It was really excellent.’

Nate Larsen, a freshman music education major and another eighth-floor resident, said that he and his floormates are planning to press a sexual assault charge against Morris.

‘We can put this guy behind bars,’ Larsen said. ‘It wasn’t about him being in here. It was him being in our bathroom. It was an invasion of privacy.

‘When you take a shower, you’re focusing on taking a shower. You’re not focusing on who’s watching you. This is our home, and this kind of thing makes you feel so vulnerable.’

Morris was charged with second-degree burglary and fourth-degree stalking, Callisto said. Morris is being held at the Onondaga County Justice Center, according to Justice Center records.

MacDonald said that even though there was tension with a suspected stalker roaming around the hall, he felt that the floor came together.

‘Everyone was kind of uniting in a way to get this guy. It was really a team effort to bring this guy in this morning,’ he said.

smtracey@syr.edu

Published on November 12, 2009 at 12:00 pm