It seems thawing temperatures brought some colorful characters out of the woodwork this week. In addition to the alarmingly violent incidents that happened this past weekend, a string of rather bizarre interactions also took place on or near campus over the past few days.

February 6

Police met a female student in front of the HUB after she reported a series of threatening calls she had been receiving.

“She said she had been receiving about 20 or 30 calls a day from a female caller,” said UWPD Assistant Chief Ralph Robinson. “She didn’t know who the caller was, but she thought it might be her friend’s ex-girlfriend. She said the caller was yelling profanity, calling her a ‘slut,’ and telling her she was going to bring her friends to campus to ‘kick her ass.’”

The police have thus far been unable to trace the calls.

February 7

At about 10:30 a.m. junior Kristen Upham was walking near the IMA when she saw a man she described as homeless-looking and wearing a bright pink and blue jacket urinating near the side of the building.

“He was right near the shrubbery on the side of the buildings with the mirrors. I mean, this guy was just peeing right out in the open,” Upham said.

Upham said that the man then started bugging students, so she called the police. She began describing the man on the phone to the officer on the other line while the man was walking away.

“As soon as he heard his description, he slowed down, so I stopped walking,” Upham said. “Then he stopped.”

Upham said she then hurried past him and started walking briskly away from him. She said he began saying things to her, but she couldn’t hear him because she was still on the phone to the police.

“Then he started chasing me,” she said.

Upham was still on the phone with police while she ran across the street, through the IMA parking lot and up the stairs. When she reached the top of the stairs, he stopped chasing her. The police arrived, and officers talked to the suspect while another officer pulled up in a squad car to talk to Upham.

“The officer asked me if I had seen his penis, and I told her no,” she said. “Then she asked me if I knew what he said to me, and I said that I couldn’t hear him. The police told me that they couldn’t arrest him because they did not witness the public urination and they could not prove that he was following me, [that] he could have just been walking the same direction.”

The police did say that the man was drunk, but that was not grounds for arrest.

“I was really pissed off, because I felt very unsafe and the police didn’t do anything, and then two days later, we have all this violence in the area on the news,” she said.

February 8

Police responded to reports of a suspicious-looking person lurking near Bloedel Hall.

“There was a man sitting on a bench staring vacantly into space,” Robinson said. The police proceeded to ask the man if he was okay and if he needed any assistance. Robinson said the man told the police he was okay, but that people kept messing with him.

“We asked him who was messing with him, and he told us that the voices were telling him to throw away his wallet and to do other things,” Robinson said. “We then asked him his name, and he said that his parents never gave him a name, and that they had shot him in the head when he was 2 years old.”

The police asked the man if he wanted help dealing with the voices and he said that he did. The police escorted the man to the UW Medical Center (UWMC) for a mental health evaluation.

Also on Feb. 8, police ventured to the UWMC, this time in response to reports of an assault. According to the police, a male patient at the medical center was being discharged from treatment, but did not want to leave. UWMC security officers handcuffed the man and were escorting him out of the emergency room when he began to struggle.

“He said to one officer, ‘I should hit you in the face,’” Robinson said. “He then took a swing at the security officers.”

The man reportedly swung with his right hand, which was clutching a carton of milk, at one of the security escorts. The security officer ducked, but milk was splashed onto his face and body.

“When we arrived, the officer had milk all over his pants and shoes,” Robinson said.

The milk-slinger was taken into custody and booked into King County Jail on fourth degree assault charges.

[Reach columnist Siv Prince at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]