Columbia College janitors have been gripped with “sheer terror” as a mob of violent anti-Israel protesters stormed Hamilton Corridor and took over the constructing on April 30 — armed with hand-drawn ground plans and provide lists, says a longtime custodian for the Ivy League college.
As dozens of rioters busted by way of glass and barricaded the entrances to occupy the historic college constructing, 4 janitors discovered themselves trapped inside and afraid, Henry Clemente, a head custodian for Columbia, advised The Put up.
“When you have masked individuals working by way of the constructing with zip ties and chains, you don’t know what they’re going to do — in the event that they’re going to take you hostage, when you’re going to be tortured, when you’re going to be made an instance,” Clemente mentioned.
Afterward, as he and his colleagues began to scrub up the corridor after NYPD cops busted up the occupation, Clemente found secret plans left behind by the extremely organized rioters.
These included hand-drawn ground plans and provide lists noting places of barricading tools; a “activity listing” with objects together with establishing a pulley system and “safety shifts” and even a schedule itemizing the occasions of the Muslim name to prayer.
The paperwork present that the protesters had insider information of the campus and plotted the takeover prematurely, he mentioned.
“I’ve been working there a very long time, so we all know the place the tunnels are, however they mapped all the pieces out,” mentioned Clemente, who has labored at Columbia for 17 years.
“They’d a meals room, a prayer room, the smoking room…they have been in there for the lengthy haul.”
The left-behind paperwork have been first reported by Gothamist.
The services boss, who was off work on the time, acquired a name that his staff had been caught contained in the constructing.
“Even when it’s two minutes, two minutes may really feel like an eternity simply confronted with the huge numbers [of protesters]” charging into the constructing.
“I may think about the sheer terror that that they had gone by way of,” he added.
Clemente mentioned the day the police went into Hamilton Corridor was “essentially the most fearful day” of the weeks-long protests on the Ivy League college, however understood the necessity to get the demonstrators out of the constructing quick, notably in in the present day’s “post-9/11 world.”
“We’ve got a number of enemies on the earth, like Russia, and China,” he mentioned.
“There’s proxy wars and various things occurring, so we don’t know who was within the constructing.”
Mayor Adams and NYPD officers have mentioned exterior agitators have been behind planning the college protests.
Of the roughly 44 arrested inside Hamilton Corridor, 13 have been not affiliated with Columbia.
Since NYPD cops stormed the constructing and arrested the protesters, Clemente has been answerable for cleansing up the mess left behind by the privileged rioters, one in all whom is allegedly the 40-year-old son of rich advert execs who lives in a $3.4 million Brooklyn townhouse.
The protesters managed to disable the elevator, and threw a whole bunch of chairs from the lecture rooms down the steps earlier than zip-tying them collectively.
In addition they eliminated tabletops from desks and drilled them into home windows as barricades.
Clemente estimates that it’ll price the college hundreds of thousands to totally restore Hamilton Corridor.
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