LSUPD arrested a man Wednesday evening in Middleton Library’s third floor men’s restroom on peeping tom charges.
LSUPD Capt. Mark Shaw said officers arrested 38 year-old Robert Pfantz of 4105 Cypress Street in Zachary, La.
Marshall Trisler, a pre-med freshman and Middleton Library third floor office worker, said he received a complaint from a library patron.
“A guy came out of the bathroom and said someone was looking through a hole in the side of the wall at other guys,” Trisler said. “Our supervisor called the police and they arrested him.”
Chase Guidry, a business senior and library worker, said he had never seen the man who the police arrested before, but the incident is not an uncommon occurrence on the third floor.
Guidry said he and his colleagues watched the man enter the restroom and watched the policemen escort him out.
“He was in the bathroom for at least 30 minutes,” Guidry said. “He was in another stall in the bathroom looking at other men in the next stall.”
Guidry said the hole in the men’s bathroom, which looks from the handicapped stall into an adjacent stall, was covered with a metal plate last year, but someone ripped it down.
Emily Davenport, a mass communication junior, said she saw two policemen escorting a man out of the lobby around 6 p.m.
“I saw the man in the handcuffs,” Davenport said. “One policeman had him by each arm.”
Davenport said she has heard people complaining about sexual harassment in the third floor men’s restroom before.
Paul Westerberg, a dairy sciences junior and library worker, said the third floor is referred to by his coworkers as the “sin floor.”
Westerberg said the library’s third floor is infamous for sexual activity because it is blocked off and there is more privacy.
“There was an incident with a man and a woman in the women’s bathroom last year,” Westerberg said. “It’s really the sin floor.”
Shaw said LSUPD has responded to similar complaints in the past from Middleton Library, but he does not recall any recent specific incidents.
“We do get reports of homosexual activity in Middleton and other buildings on campus periodically,” Shaw said.
Shaw said he did not think the man was a University student, and Pfantz’s name was not found in the PAWS directory.