At 6:30 a.m. on Friday morning, Enobong Etteh ’13 woke up suddenly to see an intruder standing in his bedroom in West College (Westco). Etteh suspects that the intruder was a non-Wesleyan student. Before falling asleep, Etteh had propped his door open with a box of peppermint tea, and said he must have forgotten to shut it.

“I wasn’t really deeply asleep and when he entered the room I was startled by it,” Etteh said. “He was asking for money, and then I was startled and asked ‘What are you doing here?’ He was trying to reassure me that he didn’t want to hurt me, he just needed some help.”

Etteh said that he considered the intruder’s manner to be more pitiable than threatening.

“I started to feel almost embarrassed,” Etteh said. “I was like, ‘I wish you had caught me at a better time.’ If you had caught me at any other time I would have had some money, but I literally had no money in my room.”

According to Etteh, the intruder repeated his request for money, and Etteh once again told him that he had none, taking him by the shoulder and leading him out of the room.

“I started to walk him out, but he kept asking me, ‘So can you help me or not?’” Etteh said. “I said, ‘I guess. I mean I don’t have any money, but do you need clothes?’ because he said, ‘I smell.’”

Etteh said he was concerned that if he did not help the intruder, he would start going to other residents of the dorm.

“I didn’t want him to bother anyone else. I was just thinking, ‘How can I resolve the situation as quickly as possible?’”

Etteh said he did not have any clean clothes at the time, but he offered to give him items from his dirty laundry. The intruder began changing his clothes on the spot.

“He started taking off his clothes and he smelled so bad, it was disgusting,” Etteh said. “The smell was in my mouth and my nose, and I told him ‘You need to go take a shower. Take a shower.’”

According to Etteh, the intruder who “smelled like the elephant cage at the zoo” showered in the Up 4 bathroom, then came back naked, covering himself with his hands. Etteh gave the man some of his spare clothing.

The pair shook hands and the intruder exited the room.

“He said ‘I appreciate you,’” Etteh said.

Etteh said that he called Public Safety (Psafe) to report the incident immediately after the man left.

Director of PSafe Dave Meyer said that a suspect was identified on Sunday morning after a similar incident occurred in the Nicolson dorms.

“We identified the person Sunday and are looking to see if it was the same person from Friday,” Meyer said.

Meyer said that the suspect in question was the guest of a student.

“It appears that when the individual was drunk he acted peculiar,” Meyer said.

Etteh said that he thinks he had an encounter with the same man in a different hall in WestCo earlier that night at approximately 11 p.m. He reported that the man was with a group of people that Etteh said he believed were non-Wesleyan students, and identified himself as “Larry.” Etteh’s friend ushered the group out of the building.

“I guess the moral of the story is, always lock your door at night,” Etteh said.