6A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY OF DALLY KANSAS
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2008
CRIME
Mystery man climbs Ranch roof, attracts crowd
BY RUSTIN DODD
dodd@kansan.com
After spending four hours on the roof of the Ranch on Monday afternoon and puzzling police and sever-
An unidentified man stood atop the roof of the Ranch on Monday afternoon tosses a duffle bag to a Lawrence Police Officer after several hours of negotiation. After officers talked the man into coming down from the roof peacefully, he was taken to the Lawrence Police Station for questioning. Sent, Michael Monne said the man may be charmed with criminal trespassing.
at witnesses,
an unknown
man willingly
came 'down
with an officer.
Ryan McGeeney/KANSAN
Unidentified man
Moments later, a squad car speed down Sixth
Street with the man in the back. As of Monday, police had no details about the man's identity or motives. Sgt. Michael Monroe said the man would be charged with criminal trespassing.
The police arrived at the Ranch, a popular student bar at Sixth and Crestline streets, after getting called by a passerby around 12:15 p.m. The ensuing commotion attracted several witnesses, including a painter from Portland, a Conoco gas station clerk, a good Samaritan in a beat-up black car, three fraternity brothers and a French Mastiff named Mary Jane.
It began after 11 a.m., when an unknown man exited a Greyhound bus outside of the adjacent Conoco and climbed the awning on the west side of the Ranch to get on the roof. He wore a white T-shirt and baggy green shorts, carried a mysterious bag and at one point, ripped the sleeves off his shirt and covered his face with them. According to Lawrence police, the man's bus ticket confirmed that he had arrived from Denver.
lake Gray, a young man from Portland, Ore., left his room at the nearby Rodeway Inn to let his French Mastiff dog, Mary Jane, go the bathroom shortly after the police arrived. Gray said he saw 10 police cars, an ambulance and a man on the roof of the Ranch. He thought it was a hostage situation or robbery and returned to his room.
"I thought I'd just stay in there," Gray said, "and hope a bullet doesn't fly through."
Gray and his friend, Stephanie Baskins, watched "Law & Order" on TV for a couple of hours. Gray wanted to change the channel, but Baskins hid the remote.
While they sat in the Rodeway Inn, police tried negotiating with the man from the west side of the building. The man shook his head several times, agreed to let the police give him a blanket and accepted a lighter and cigarette from Lawrence resident Rob Mansour.
Mansour drove by in a beat-up black car around 2:15 p.m. He
walked toward the side of the building and tossed up the cigarette and lighter before an officer told him to leave.
"He just looked like he needed to smoke." Mansour said.
Although police said the man on the roof barely talked, he gave one possible motive for why he climbed on top of the Ranch as he sat there with his hands in his pockets. "I want to sit up here alone for a while," he shouted.
Police didn't climb on the roof until about 2:45 p.m. Monroe said they wanted to take every precaution to ensure their safety and the man's safety.
Down below at the Conoco station, a clerk gave a man who had bought diesel his receipt. The clerk came in shortly after the police cars had arrived, and her co-worker suspected that the man had come in on the 10:55 Greyhound bus, which releases passengers in front of Conoco.
The clerk, who insisted on anonymity, had seen Greyhound passengers who talked to themselves, made weird motions and acted irate for no reason. She'd never seen anything like this.
Neither had three fraternity boys. Joe Sportsman, Tampa, Fla., freshman; David Brinker, Leawood junior, and Jack Hodes, Kansas City, Mo., junior, pulled up to the Conco minutes before 3 p.m. After
attending morning classes, the three students had left the Kappa Sigma fraternity house to buy snacks.
"Only in Lawrence," Sportsman said, as he held a fountain drink in his hand. Sportsman, Brinker and Hodes watched from the Conoco sidewalk as police continued to engage the unknown man.
"I think he could have picked a better bar than the Ranch," Hodes said.
At 3:18 p.m., the unknown man relented, and police helped him climb down through a hatch in the roof.
Inside the Conoco, the clerk watched.
"They're transit people," she said. "You don't know who they are, where they're from or what problems came with them."
Gray wasn't there to see the unknown man finally come down from his perch. The painter from Portland, who had caught one more glimpse of the mystery man on his way to the Dollar General, returned again to his hotel room shortly before 3 p.m.
Gray said he was going to drink a beer, check on Mary Jane and watch TV with Baskins.
"Hopefully she doesn't turn on 'Law & Order' he said.
Managing Editor Mark Dent contributed reporting to this article.
- Edited by Jennifer Torline