A man with brown hair slipped into a Stoke Hall dorm room at the University of New Hampshire early Sunday while students were asleep inside, and tried to make off with their belongings before campus police were called in. The break-in happened at about 2 a.m. in Durham, prompting UNH police to issue a warning urging students across campus to lock their doors and windows and report anything suspicious.
According to WMUR, the investigation into the Stoke Hall incident remains ongoing, and officials have not released further detail on the suspect beyond his brown hair. Stoke Hall is the largest residence hall at UNH and sits near the heart of campus, according to the university's own housing office, making it one of the more heavily populated dorms where such a warning would reach a large number of students at once.
Police Still Hunting Suspect From Earlier Dorm Burglaries
This is not the first time UNH police have asked the campus community for help tracking down someone targeting dorm rooms. Officers have previously said they were working to track down a person behind a series of dorm burglaries, per the station's earlier reporting. In that case, police received three reports on Monday and Tuesday of burglaries happening at Handler Hall, another residence hall on campus.
Those Handler Hall incidents, reported in March, were tied to a narrower kind of theft. The student newspaper notes that the only items that have been reported stolen are UGGs and other similar footwear, according to the The New Hampshire. In one of those cases, an unknown suspect entered a dorm room around 5:55 p.m. on March 2 and stole a pair of UGG slippers, prompting UNH police to issue a timely warning notification the following evening, at 7:10 p.m. on March 3, regarding the burglary investigation in Handler Hall.
A fourth report from that same string of incidents described an unknown male who went into a room but left when the resident acknowledged him, the outlet's earlier coverage states.
Echoes of a 2004 Stoke Hall Warning
Sunday's incident is not the first time Stoke Hall has been the subject of an intruder warning. Back on September 10, 2004, students were warned to lock their dorm room doors after several reports of theft and intruder sightings, according to the Sun Journal. Those sightings and cash thefts had all happened at Stoke Hall, which was described at the time as a women's dormitory, and students said they saw a man leaving their rooms as they returned home.
The 2004 suspect was described as 5-foot-9, in his 30s, with scraggly hair, and the hall's director at the time, Brian Williams, warned students not to let strangers into the building and to keep their valuables out of sight.
What UNH Police Are Asking Students To Do Now
For now, officials are urging the roughly 25 residence halls' worth of students across UNH's campus to keep their doors and windows locked and to report any suspicious activity they see. With the investigation into Sunday's break-in still active, police have not said whether any property was taken or whether the man has been identified.
