Man uses ladder to attempt second-floor Peeping Tom
Kyle GoonIssue date: 3/10/09
Prince George's County Police arrested a man early yesterday morning after he was caught peeping at a female student through a second-floor window in College Park.
Police arrested 37-year-old Roman Clarence Millard of Lanham and charged him with two counts of trespassing, including a Peeping Tom charge, one count of fourth-degree burglary and issuing a false statement to a police officer, according to charging documents obtained from police. Investigators are looking into the possibility that the crime was a botched burglary.
At about 4 a.m., police said Millard took a ladder from a yard on the 4900 block of Hopkins Avenue and climbed up the ladder to the second floor of another house on the block. A student inside the house saw the suspect spying on her, made eye contact with him and ran to get her boyfriend, another university student, said Maj. Daniel Lipsey, acting commander of District 1.
Millard dismounted the ladder and fled, but the victim's boyfriend alerted county police and University Police who were on the scene within minutes, combing the area in patrol cars. The county even utilized a helicopter in the pursuit that flew in the vicinity of the campus.
Eventually police began to narrow down a perimeter off of suspect sightings by residents. The helicopter's infrared radar helped identify the suspect's location and pin him down, Lipsey said.
Police caught up to Millard on Girard Avenue, a dead-end court off of Norwich Road, only a few blocks away from the scene of the incident. The search took about 15 to 20 minutes, Lipsey said.
When he was arrested, Millard gave police a false name before he was definitively identified by his fingerprints.
Millard has faced trespassing and Peeping Tom charges before. In 1999, Millard was accused of trespassing in Montgomery County, but the prosecutor dropped the charges before the case went to trial.
Lipsey said the quick response of the students led to the arrest.
"The key to success is getting timely information from our victims," he said. "That's how we were there right away."
Neither of the students involved in the incident could be reached for comment.
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