Whitt
At approximately 7:30 a.m. Sunday, Maxine Mei and Stella Hua were sleeping in their ninth-floor dorm in South Hubbard Hall when two strange men entered, grabbed Hua’s laptop, iPad and iPod Nano and promptly left the room.
Mei and Hua, both supply chain management freshmen, were among a number of students to fall victim to the burglary duo, as six other residents of South Hubbard Hall reported laptops and money taken from their rooms following an investigation by the MSU police.
Mei and Hua were able to describe the two men to a responding officer and, subsequently, 26-year-old Jonathon O’Brien Hatcher of Orrville, Ala., and 19-year-old Leroy Lamar Whitt of Detroit, were apprehended as they made their way to a vehicle across the street.
Following the arrests, Hua’s possessions were returned to her.
Premedical freshman Zach Reilly’s room on the second floor also was broken into Sunday morning while he and his roommates were asleep.
Reilly locked the door to his room before going to bed, but when he woke up he found the door open.
“These people came in through (our suitemate’s) door, through the bathroom, into our room while we both were sleeping,” he said.
“They came and took (my roommate’s) laptop and his keys and then came out through (our) door.”
Reilly’s laptop was chained to his desk so he said he didn’t think anything of the cracked door when he woke up at 9:30 a.m.
But when his roommate, finance freshman Ryan Watt, woke up a few hours later, they both realized what had happened.
Watt had left his laptop on a chair next to his bed the night before.
“It’s a little scary just to know that someone was in my room right by where I was sleeping,” he said.
“I’m a pretty heavy sleeper. I’m from California, so I’m used to earthquakes.”
Although Watt was upset at first and wanted someone to blame, he was grateful just to have his laptop back.
However, when he retrieved the computer from the MSU police Wednesday afternoon, he discovered the hardware was cleared.
“I don’t know how they could do it that quickly, I had a couple passwords on my computer that they would have had to get through,” Watt said.
A similar home invasion occurred the day before in East Wilson Hall, McGlothian-Taylor said.
An 18-year-old female student reported that two black men wearing hooded sweatshirts entered her room at approximately 5 a.m. Saturday and stole her MacBook Pro, McGlothian-Taylor said.
The student was woken up by the slamming of her door and, when she realized her laptop was gone, she ran out to the stairwell, at which point she saw the two men.
The student yelled at the man holding the laptop, asking him to give it back. After yelling several times, the man returned the laptop and ran southwest down Wilson Road toward Birch Road.
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McGlothian-Taylor said there is no known connection between this incident and the incidents in Hubbard Hall.
The two alleged thefts were arraigned Monday morning in East Lansing’s 54-B District Court and charged with five counts of home invasion.
Hatcher was additionally charged with one count of possession of a dangerous weapon.
Both men are being held in Ingham County Jail on a $100,000 bond.
