Police Detain Man in Lamont Implicated in Domestic Dispute

UPDATED: May 1, 2014, at 4:08 p.m.

Harvard University Police detained an unidentified white male unaffiliated with the University in the foyer of Lamont Library around 3 p.m. Wednesday after receiving a report that he was acting suspiciously, having been denied access to the library and in possession of a knife.

The man in question was trying to enter Lamont to reach his girlfriend, who worked there, and with whom he had had a dispute minutes earlier as they moved from an unnamed local high school toward Harvard’s campus, according to reports filed by the Cambridge Police Department Wednesday evening.

No charges were ultimately pressed, according to Jeremy Warnick, director of communications for CPD, though the man in question was removed from the scene in handcuffs.

The reports show that the woman, who is not a Harvard student, was trying to break up with the man at the time of the dispute. As the two individuals left the high school, they were joined by a second man, identified in the report as a friend, who pushed the first man off of his bike and then threw it at him.

The woman fled the scene to Lamont, where after a second altercation with her boyfriend, she made it inside the building to call police. According to the CPD police reports, she was in “fear for her self.”

CPD was notified of the first altercation involving a bike around 2:40 p.m. and then about the incident at the library by HUPD around 3:11 p.m.

After detaining the boyfriend in the lobby of Lamont, HUPD officers escorted him in handcuffs to an ambulance on Quincy St. shortly after 3:30 p.m. According to the CPD reports, the man sustained a cut and a small bruise on the back of his head from the bike altercation.

Incident at Lamont -

Incident at Lamont -

Incident at Lamont -

Incident at Lamont: Entering the Ambulance -

Incident at Lamont -

Incident at Lamont -

Incident at Lamont -

Authorities at Lamont -

Incident at Lamont -

Incident at Lamont -

Incident at Lamont -

Library and HUPD officials declined to comment at the scene at Lamont or offer the name of the detained individual, whose shirt was unbuttoned and hands were cuffed behind his back.

Officials taped off the main entrance to the library for a little more than half an hour and directed students to enter and leave the building through the building’s Pusey entrance.

A custodial worker for the library confirmed that he was cleaning up drops of blood on the floor near a bench where the individual was held by authorities before being removed. The foyer was fully reopened around 4:35 p.m.

Police were seen handling a plastic bag containing a knife and belt shortly after. Warnick said that no one was stabbed.

Two students working at the library’s circulation desk said that while they did not see the individual in question before the police arrived, they heard increased levels of noise once authorities were on the scene.

“There was some shouting, there [were] some loud voices,” said Kelsey L. Hunt ’14, one of the two students working at the desk.

Even so, several students who were in the library while the incident occurred said that they were unaware that it had happened.

“I think most people didn’t even have a clue anything was happening,” said Sarani M. Jayawardena ’17, who was doing schoolwork in Lamont at the time of the incident.

—Staff writers Theodore R. Delwiche and Noah J. Delwiche contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Meg P. Bernhard can be reached at meg.bernhard@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @Meg_Bernhard.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: April 30, 2014

An earlier version of labels of photographs accompanying of this article incorrectly stated that the incident was an arrest. To clarify, though the individual was handcuffed, neither CPD nor HUPD made any arrests.