Former ICC Resident Jumps Off Balcony to Escape Police
A former ICC resident made a leap of faith one day by jumping off a second-story balcony in an attempt to escape campus police. Chief Erika Schwiderski (ES) was recently interviewed on the topic by Harbinger’s News Editor, Sophia Larimore.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
SL
Okay, so this is something that I’ve been wanting for a while, could you tell me the full story of what happened?
ES
It sounds more interesting when you just hear a random story from somebody about it. It was a former resident, his name was Dae-John Davis Lewis. A lot of the residents knew him because he lived there before, but he had been removed. If people are commonly having lease violations or issues with us, or issues with Code of Conduct here at the college, then they’re going to be removed from housing, right? They’re creating a disturbance for everybody else.
So he had been removed the year prior. And when people are removed from campus housing, we issue them a trespass notice, meaning you can’t come back here. And a lot of times, they may not be removed from the college at all, or, or taken out of classes, just that they can’t be there at housing. This is a small community, they should be safe there.
So, he had been removed from housing just due to several violations, and then told not to come back. He had been using a few different names with people with friends. And so he had been kind of just bouncing from couch to couch, you know, with his friends there. We would hear stories that he was there, and then finally, when officers had a story where he was there, I could see him on camera walking around. So the officers went, made contact with the person he was with, then found him at the at an apartment there.
And while the officers were talking to him, he gave them a different name, because he didn’t want to get in trouble for being there. So while they’re trying to verify his name, and check through that, he decided, “I’m just gonna run away.” So that’s when, as the story you heard, he jumped over the balcony, because officers are standing there talking to him. And he thinks, “Well, you know, it’s an open balcony, I’m gonna go right here.” And then he took off running. So officers, you know, followed him a little bit to where he was going. But a simple trespassing violation over there is not really something that either officers or we need him to get hurt on. So he takes off running through the woods, we’re just gonna let him keep going. It’s not important enough to chase somebody in that situation, right? Nobody needs to get hurt doing that.
SL
I was really curious. I didn’t know if that trespassing was worth being arrested over.
ES
So normally for trespassing, it depends on how many times somebody’s going to do it. So the college has what we call RVN. It’s a regulation violation notice, which is basically a ticket. It’s a college ticket that people are given for a whole bunch of things, you know? Maybe they threatened somebody, maybe they damaged some property, maybe they stole something from the cafeteria, a lot of minor things, those types of things we will give college tickets out for. It’s not a criminal route, you know, we’re not taking, we’re not arresting somebody, they’re not going through the State’s Attorney’s Office at all. But they still have a sanction to hopefully not do the behavior anymore. So give them a ticket, they have a fine, it’s paid to the college.
So if it was an issue and somebody was doing something more than trespassing or doing it over and over and over again, then it is something that people can be either arrested for, or really, they’re given a notice to appear in court. As long as they leave and take off, then it’s not something that you arrest them over and they get held in jail for.
SL
Thanks for explaining that. Because, a lot of my friends were like, “Did he get arrested? Did they catch him?” You know what people are like.
ES
Obviously, we gave the right impression to him that we’re not going to deal with it anymore, because he hasn’t come back after that. And that’s really the goal we’re looking for. Don’t come to campus, you’re not supposed to be here on campus housing. You’re certainly not supposed to be giving fake names to people when they don’t know who you are. So that was something we did send out to all the residents with, you know, his name his picture and just say, “Hey, he’s not allowed here on campus housing. If you do allow him here, it’s a lease violation for them too because they’re not supposed to bring people there that aren’t supposed to be there and have them in their apartment.”
SL
Yeah, we actually covered that in the Harbinger. We put out a little police report saying, “Hey, if you do this, that’s not good. Don’t do that.”
Can I ask why he was banned? I know that’s probably iffy if I can ask and I understand if you can’t answer, or just don’t remember.
ES
He had so many. He had a lot of them and a lot of them are usually minor things, you know, like roommate squabbles or something like that. I think the last the final one was him and somebody else damaged a property over there. I think they painted something, you know, some of the billboards or tagged something. And usually, by itself, you know, that wouldn’t be enough. They would probably pay for the on-campus housing to replace it and be done. But when you add it on to you know, this the fifth or sixth thing that you’ve done, then even a minor thing gets you kicked out.
SL
Thank you so much for talking about this!
For more information about crimes, investigations, and ticketing on campus, make sure to check out Harbinger’s Police Reports on the website. The latest report can be found here.