Hanover Police and Safety and Security are on the lookout for an unidentified man who has engaged in suspicious and threatening behavior as many as three times on or near campus since Monday.
The first incident occurred Monday when two female Dartmouth students were walking down South Main Street past the Dirt Cowboy Cafe. As the two walked by the cafe, a man sitting at one of the outdoor tables asked them to sit down, telling them he had two seats for two pretty ladies, according to one of the women, Celeste Griffin-Churchill '07.
Griffin-Churchill and her friend continued down the street thinking that their encounter with the man had ended, but before long he had quietly caught up and was standing right next to them.
The man, whom Griffin-Churchill described as a brown-haired white male of average height wearing a khaki coat, a striped beanie hat and a blue backpack, told the women that he had been trying to call some girl but she had not responded to his phone calls.
Carrying a phone in his hand, he asked the two what they would do if they were in his shoes. He asked if they would ignore the girl, keep calling her or kill her, Griffin-Churchill said. He then suggested that maybe, since he is mad at women in general, he should kill other women instead.
The girls emphatically told him that he should not do the latter two, Griffin-Churchill said.
The two girls reached Molly's Restaurant & Bar and started walking inside when the man asked them, "Do I scare you? I like people with a dark side," according to Griffin-Churchill.
When the junior took one more look at the man in order to get a physical description, he was grinning back at her "maniacally," she said. The two women reported the incident to Hanover Police.
Griffin-Churchill described the man's appearance and demeanor as normal and even moderately attractive.
"Absolutely nothing about him that would peg him as a psycho," she said.
Safety and Security describes the suspect as a white male in his early twenties, 5'9" to 6'0" in height, with slender build and short dark hair.
Two days later, at about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Hanover Police received a report from a Dartmouth student living in the River Cluster that a man who fit a similar description was standing in the woodline behind French Hall.
Based on footprints going to and from where the man had been lurking, he appeared to have been peering in first floor windows in the back of the dormitory, Hanover Police Chief Nicholas Giaccone said.
The next day, police received a similar report. The caller had heard what had happened the day before, and told authorities that a man who fit the same description was again snooping around French Hall at about 9 a.m., College Proctor Harry Kinne said.
Hanover Police and Safety and Security currently are not sure that the incidents are related or if the man in each incident is the same, Kinne said.
"There are some similarities in description, but they're vague," he said.
Kinne added that he has never seen incidents like these occur in such close proximity at Dartmouth.
