One year ago Wednesday, 24-year-old Fairfield alumnus Patrick Arbelo, carrying a cardboard box with exposed wires, suddenly walked into Dr. Elizabeth Dreyer’s religious studies class in Canisius Hall claiming he had a bomb.
Today, Fairfield students have not forgotten, nor have they completely recovered from that traumatic day.
“I think I’m still dealing with it,” said Nora Lopez, ’03, one of the student hostages. “Just lately, I’ve been thinking about it more often because this was the time around when it happened. It’s weird. It still feels like it didn’t really happen.”
Elissa DeRose, ’04, another student who was held hostage by Arbelo, agreed.
“It’s just the type of thing that won’t go away,” said DeRose. “Today, for instance, someone was standing outside my class and I got nervous.”
Although no one was harmed and the bomb was deemed not dangerous by a bomb squad, 27 students and Dr. Dreyer were held hostage for six hours on Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2002. Arbelo, who is nearly blind and partially deaf, wanted a statement that he had written to be read over CBS radio. The statement was said to be anti-Semitic and was eventually read by last hostage Ripton Marini,’02, but it was never aired.
Arbelo, of Seaview Terrace, pleaded not guilty to 27 counts of first-degree kidnapping charges on Tuesday Feb. 26, 2002. Now, state prosecutors are working with Arbelo’s lawyer, Vincent Noce, to ensure that Arbelo receives proper psychiatric care before a prison sentence is issued, according to the Connecticut Post.
Lopez doesn’t feel justice is being served.
“I’m pretty upset about it,” Lopez said. “He planned this out and he knew what he was doing. I hope he gets jail time. I think he’s disturbed and has problems, but he didn’t have to go about it the way he did.”
As far as something like this ever occurring again, Mike Lauzon, assistant director of Security, said that he was hopeful that it wouldn’t, but could make no promises.
“He [Arbelo] was an alumni and he was known around here,” Lauzon said. “We never thought he would do something like this. We can be very careful, but how secure can we be?”
Some students complained that they weren’t well informed by the university the day of the hostage crisis.
Although Melissa Nowicki, ’05, was not held hostage, she still feels the repercussions of that day a year ago.
“I think it was the first time that we realized that ‘it could happen to use,'” said Nowicki. “We think that just because we live in a beautiful suburb in the richest county in the United States that crime doesn’t exist here.”
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