A campus safety alert arrived in USM e-mail inboxes on Friday afternoon, alerting the community about a man who had been found acting suspiciously on the Portland campus.
He has a history of frequenting college campuses, and has been reported to police at Bowdoin College as well as in Portland’s Old Port.
In the campus safety e-mail, Erik Tillotson was described as showing “a pattern of suspicious behavior towards women.” This information had been forwarded to USM Police by the Bowdoin College and Portland Police Departments.
Tillotson was first seen by students late Friday morning in the Glickman Library, wandering the building with a guitar. A few hours later, students saw him in the Woodbury Campus Center as USM Police questioned him and searched his backpack.
While traipsing the library, Tillotson wandered into room 423 to find a meeting of The Free Press in session. Dressed in a purple winter hat with a guitar slung over his shoulder, he attempted to serenade The Free Press staff and board of advisors.
“Is this the group I am suppose to entertain?” he asked, as those gathered assumed the man must have been lost.
One staff member recalled thinking the man might be there as a “singing telegram” of sorts, as he snuck up behind media studies professor Matt Killmeier, who was speaking, with his back to the door, when Tillotson came into the room.
When asked to leave by executive editor Sarah Trent, Tillotson took his time. When it seemed he wasn’t going to leave, staff tried to ignore him and continue their meeting.
After briefly strumming his guitar and singing, Tillotson tried to start a conversation and then slowly made his way out of the room.
He was later spotted on the seventh floor of Glickman, and then again in the campus center where the campus police got involved.
The Portland Police Department was called, but he was not arrested. The department dealt with him again later that night-in the Old Port and Monument Square on Friday evening, a member of the police department described him as being “a problem all night.”
He was spoken to by police for acting “aggressive(ly) toward women.” They said the abuse was only verbal.
The police did not arrest Tillotson, although one officer said they are very familiar with his history.
USM Police would not comment on specific details of the incident, citing it as a police matter. In the e-mail alert, it was stated that Tillotson was served criminal trespass papers, banning him from the USM campus.
In November 2004, he was arrested on the Bowdoin College campus after a police investigation in which he was suspected of using “unknown debilitating substances,” on female students, according to The Bowdoin Orient. He was convicted of invasion of privacy in 2005 in connection with the incident at Bowdoin.
Similar strange behavior has been observed in the Portland area.
Stephanie Atwood, of the Portland Downtown District, remembers some incidents with Tillotson while she was working at a kiosk in Tommy’s Park.
Atwood says Tillotson would come to the park during the summer and start unprovoked arguments with park-goers. “He would yell at anything and everything,” she said. “He was always trying to get into a fight over the most ridiculous things.”
Atwood says that Tillotson appeared normal aside from his strange behavior, but that attempts from people in the park to calm him down, “just didn’t seem to register. He would just start directing his anger at them.”
The USM community has been advised to contact USM Police if Tillotson is seen on campus. The campus safety alert e-mail reminds students that Tillotson is also suspected of using “date-rape” drugs, that students should always closely monitor their drinks and not accept drinks from strangers.
The USM Police Department can be reached at 780-5211 or by dialing 9-1-1 from most campus phone-lines. They are located in the Sullivan Gym and the Portland Hall garage in Portland and in Upton Hastings Hall in Gorham.