By Drew Teague and Becca Clemons
dteague@kykernel.com and bclemons@kykernel.com
UK Police issued a crime bulletin Wednesday after a student was assaulted on the second floor of the W.T. Young Library at around 8 p.m. Tuesday.
The victim was assaulted with an unknown sharp object, which caused minor injuries to her foot.
The bulletin reported a suspicious man was seen in the area. He is described as a heavy-set male between 5-foot-7-inches and 5-foot-9-inches tall, wearing a black and white baseball cap, black tennis shoes and a black and silver briefcase or laptop case. He was last seen walking toward the stairwell of the Core 4 area of the library, on the second floor, the bulletin said.
“About 8 o’clock last night a young lady went into the library, second floor, in one of the cubicles and she felt a sharp pain to her foot,” UK Police Chief Joe Monroe said. “She took her shoe off and looked into her shoe and saw that she was bleeding. She looked at her friend sitting next to her, they looked around. They didn’t see anybody underneath the table. They saw someone that looked kind of suspicious, they didn’t really belong there, and that’s the description that they gave us that’s in the crime bulletin.”
The bulletin also said UK Police received similar reports in April 2011 in the W.T. Young Library.
At the time of those reports, UK Police issued a crime bulletin warning students of fourth-degree assaults that occurred in the basement of the W.T. Young Library.
The April 2011 bulletin said: “In both incidents the victims reported that the suspect crawled under the study desk and used an unknown object to puncture their feet.”
UK spokeswoman Kathy Johnson said in an email to the Kernel at the time that both victims were females wearing sandals.
Monroe said it’s too early to tell if the incidents in 2011 and on Tuesday are related.
“It’s too early to say that the two are tied together by the same person,” Monroe said, “but it is very coincidental that it’s the same type of M.O. (method) that occurred.”
UK did not issue a UK Alert for the previous incidents because the occurrence did not fit the description of an event needing such an alert, Johnson said, citing the Office of Emergency Management’s Timely Warning Policy.
“Campus Crime Bulletins will be issued when a crime has occurred that represents a potential threat or ongoing danger to the safety of the campus community that may not require immediate action but is still deemed important,” according to the policy.
Police also did not issue an alert Tuesday night. The crime bulletin was sent campuswide Wednesday morning.
“I think it’s crazy actually, because I went to the library last night at 10 o’clock and had absolutely no idea that it had happened,” said MacKenzie Clark, a nursing freshman. “I wasn’t informed that it happened until this morning. It’s actually quite scary because you’re sitting in the library and you never think that someone’s going to stab your foot.”
Police are looking at security cameras in the library but have not gotten any additional information leading to a suspect so far.
Monroe said the victim from Tuesday’s incident is all right and suffered minor bleeding injuries on her foot.
“I feel like it’s a very absurd thing that someone would want to stab someone in the foot and hide under a table,” said Alex Salupo, a nursing freshman. “I think that’s very odd. I’m going to be taking precautions, wearing some tennis shoes — probably not go to the library as much, look around for suspicious people (and) definitely look under the table before I sit down.”
Anyone with information regarding the incident can call UK Police at 859-257-8573.
Related link: Fourth-degree assaults reported in library.
Joe Monroe, 100k/yr, personal use of department cars and budget money. Seems like a winner who’s not too worried about student safety.
Here are some mild observations:
Sounds like this guy hates women’s feet.
Sounds like he has hated women’s feet for awhile now (at least more than a year).
Not only does he plot the demise of women’s feet, but he actively goes to war with women’s feet.
Interestingly, he seems to be the opposite of the “foot fetish” freaks. Those guys would have stabbed the feet with their weiners instead.
Okay, I was just playing with the above comments, but there is a real concern here. Two things come to mind. First, what were they stabbed with? Was it possible that he was trying to collect blood from them, or possibly inject them with something? We’ve all heard the urban legends about syringes underneath the gas pump handle infecting a hapless consumer with a terrible disease. Second, in the same way that murders sometimes start out killing animals and such, there is a real risk that some sicko is acting out his fantasies and each time is pushing the line far to get his rocks off. This is the type of stuff that could be a gateway for this guy to escalate to full-on stabbing and what not. Police need to treat this very seriously and get this guy behind bars before he does something far worse.