Thursday September 11, 2014 year: 134 No. 66
@TheLantern weather high 72 low 55 cloudy
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‘Shoe offers chargers
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Food truck serves OSU
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9/11 remembered
Alleged rape victim reports being kicked off COTA bus
Students move into house where stranger lived
CHELSEA SPEARS Multimedia editor spears.116@osu.edu A woman who was reportedly raped inside an off-campus garage early Saturday morning told detectives that before her alleged assault, she was asked to get off the Central Ohio Transit Authority bus she was riding because she wasn’t wearing shoes, a detective with the Columbus Division of Police Special Victims Bureau said. The woman, whose name is not being released and who is not an Ohio State student, according to Columbus Police spokeswoman Denise Alex-Bouzounis, was riding a COTA bus headed southbound on High Street early Saturday morning, detective James Ashenhurst said. He said her flip-flop was broken, so she took off her shoes. “The bus driver said, ‘Hey, you have to have shoes on,’ so she got off to try and find a cheap pair of flip-flops,” Ashenhurst said following a conversation police had with the woman. Ashenhurst said the woman got off the bus at North High and East Hudson streets
CHELSEA SPEARS / Multimedia editor
Officer Christopher Billman (left) and officer Thomas DeWitt (right) caught a man reportedly raping a woman Sept. 6. but wasn’t sure of the exact time she exited the bus. At about 1:50 a.m., three Columbus Police bike patrol officers found a man on top of the woman inside a residential garage, located between East 12th and East 13th Avenues, “engaging in what appeared to be sexual intercourse,” a CPD press release states. The three male officers intervened and waited for a female officer to come talk to the woman. During the course of that conversation, the woman said the man had forced her into the garage and sexually assaulted her, the press release states. Officer Christopher Billman is one of the bike patrol officers who caught the man reportedly raping the woman. During a Wednesday evening press conference, Billman said the officers didn’t hear the woman shout for help— they just routinely check on open garages. “We didn’t really see or hear anything at the time. We just lit up the section of garages (with our flashlights) and that’s when we found the suspect and victim,” Billman said. Billman’s been with CPD for 14 years and spent four of those years on the bike patrol. He said coming across a situation like this doesn’t happen often. “It’s very rare to catch someone in the act – so many times you hear about it,” Billman said. “It’s just one of those things – be in the right place at the right time.” Joshua Martin, lead detective with the CPD Special Victims Bureau, said there were increased patrols in the area that night with OSU students being back on campus and it being an OSU gameday weekend. “It was just really lucky. (The officers) happened to be in the area,” Martin said. “It was just on their beat.” Sometime between the time the woman got off the COTA bus and her alleged assault in the garage, she encountered Randy Graham Jr., a
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“It was probably the best year of my four years in college just because of the camaraderie the developed between me and my 9 roommates.” - M.J. Dorony, a fifth-year in journalism FRANZ ROSS / Lantern TV Station manager
Columbus Division of Police taped off a residence at East 13th Avenue and North 4th Street after human remains were found inside.
Human remains found near campus LOGAN HICKMAN, FRANZ ROSS AND RITIKA SHAH Campus editor, Lantern TV Station manager and Lantern TV News director hickman.201@osu.edu, ross.955@osu.edu and shah.718@osu.edu Human remains were found less than half a mile from Ohio State’s campus Tuesday into Wednesday night. The remains, however, are not believed to be those of an Ohio State student, Columbus Division of Police Sgt. Richard Weiner said late Wednesday afternoon. The remains could have been in the home for up to several months, he said. “There’s extreme decomposition that’s presenting challenges for the investigators,” he said. The remains were found after a neighbor who knew the resident went inside the home after smelling a strange odor, according to 10TV. So far the cause of death is unknown and will require additional collection of forensic evidence, Weiner said. “There’s nothing at this point that leads us to believe that this was a homicide, however, we are treating it as such until we can rule that out for sure,” he said. Although the home appeared to be abandoned, police are still trying to determine if someone was renting the residence when the person died, Weiner said. Still, he said there appeared to be a “hoarding situation” inside the home. “Imagine all kinds of debris — there’s trash, boxes just stacked up on the floor, there’s not an open part of the place to walk on,” he said. Police were still trying to reach the property owner as of Wednesday afternoon, he said.
FRANZ ROSS / Lantern TV station manager
Human remains were removed from an off-campus residence at North 4th Street and East 13th Avenue Sept. 10. The Franklin County Auditor’s website lists the property owners as James and Margaret Amick. Contact information, though, could not be found Wednesday. One student who lives in the area said he wished he had received a public safety notice about the incident. “It does make me feel uneasy knowing that this happened directly behind my house … A safety email, something of that sort would have been nice. I just had to walk over here to find out for myself,” said Ryan Link, a third-year in psychology. “I had to ask what’s going on and (the police) can’t even give me all the information I want. I’m not too happy about that.”
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Aaron Craft prepares for NBA JAMES GREGA, JR. Asst. sports editor grega.9@osu.edu When the 2014 NBA Draft concluded, and his name hadn’t been called, Aaron Craft was unfazed. Like the majority of his career at Ohio State, Craft dusted himself off and began to move forward.
Despite going undrafted in June, Craft was invited to play with the Philadelphia 76ers and Golden State Warriors during the NBA summer league before being officially signed by the Warriors last week. For most, receiving an offer from an NBA team would be cause for celebration. For Craft, it led to a deep breath before getting back to work.
Lantern File Photo
Then-senior guard Aaron Craft (4) drives to the basket during OSU’s 89-50 win against Morgan State on Nov. 9, 2013. After not being selected in the 2014 NBA Draft, Craft signed as a free agent with the Golden State Warriors.
“It wasn’t anything super crazy. There’s definitely a little bit of relief once we actually figured out it was happening for sure,” Craft said in an interview with The Lantern. “(I was) just kind of enjoying being at home as much as possible and then once you kind of figure it out, then you go back into work mode and try to figure out what we have to do to prepare ourselves to be ready for it.” Craft said despite not being selected in the draft, he never gave up hope of making an NBA roster. “Obviously you always want to hear your name called. Everyone takes a different path, everyone has to go their own way and this has been my path,” Craft said. “We are trying to live it out as much as possible and do it that way.” “We” likely referring to he and his wife Amber, Craft said the newlywed couple is trying to
CHELSEA SPEARS Multimedia editor spears.116@osu.edu At the bottom of the basement stairs, behind a locked door, lived a man named Jeremy. For months, Jeremy lived in secret. He didn’t know his roommates, and his roommates certainly didn’t know him. So goes the famous story of “The Stranger in the Basement.” Last year, 10 Ohio State students living in an off-campus college house discovered a stranger living behind a locked door in their basement. They thought the door led to a utility closet, but the door was actually hiding a fully furnished bedroom where Jeremy had secretly been living for months. He never once paid rent. Jeremy was immediately evicted from the house on East 13th Avenue, and the legal tenants went on leading relatively normal college lives, apart from the international attention they had gained. “In a very indirect way, you could say Jeremy brought us closer just because it was an incredible situation,” said M.J. Dorony, a fifthyear in journalism and one of the property’s legal tenants last year. “It could have been bad, yes, but to look back on it now, it’s a great story to tell.” All of the old tenants have since moved out of the house, some to new cities and some just to different parts of Columbus, and a new batch of renters have taken their place. Ryan Shary, a fourth-year in economics, is one of 15 current tenants. He said he’d seen the stranger in the basement story when it first came out roughly a year ago in The Lantern, but when he signed the lease to his new place in March, he had no idea it was the same property. “I didn’t know anything about it until a week in (of living there),” Shary said. “I mean, it was funny at first, and then I walked down to the basement.” Shary said he’s only been down to the basement a total of two times, one of which was to show The Lantern what the room looked like in its current state. “I mean, it’s creepy down there, especially since some guy was living down there,” Shary said. “It’s just creepy.” A lot of people — from news media to friends — wanted to see the room where Jeremy had once lived, and Dorony said the old tenants didn’t change a thing about the room since last year. “It was just something we kind of left untouched,” Dorony said.
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