By ASHLEY BURKETT
Courtesy of Katie Gray
Members of two sorority houses on College Avenue reported that a group of masked individuals tried to kick down their doors early in the morning of Sept. 14.
The group kicked out a panel on the front door of the Alpha Omicron Pi house at 4517 College Ave. and then kicked the door of the Kappa Delta house at 4610 College Ave. but caused no damage, witnesses said.
“Luckily nothing broke, but it was really scary,” Madalyn DiSpaldo, a member of Kappa Delta who witnessed the incident, said.
Prince George’s County Police responded to a call from the Alpha Omicron Pi house and reported no injuries. The witnesses said the culprits did not enter the house and nothing was stolen.
Katie Gray, a member of Alpha Omicron Pi, said a member of the sorority came home at approximately 12:15 a.m. to find a group of individuals at the front door. They ran off when the witness arrived, Gray said.
Gray, a sophomore business major at the University of Maryland (UMD), said she initially thought it was a harmless ding-dong-ditch – an occasional prank that college students pull – but members of the group were trying to beat down the door. The incident occurred early in the morning after Friday the 13th.
“A lot of the girls heard banging and stuff. They knew that something had happened, but they didn’t know what,” Gray said.
Gray said the door, which was covered with police tape for two days, has been repaired.
A block away, a member of Kappa Delta witnessed a similar incident.
“I was sitting in our living room around midnight when all of a sudden two guys ran up to the door,” DiSpaldo, a sophomore business major, said. DiSpaldo said the pair kicked and punched the glass parts of the door for about 20 seconds.
“Their shirts were covering their faces,” DiSpaldo added, noting that she could not identify the perpetrators.
Gray said two of her sorority sisters saw the same masked group the next night, yelled at them and tried to take pictures, but the vandals ran away. The witnesses did not see them break anything.
The police have characterized the incidents as vandalism and have not made any arrests.
