Student's prank crosses legal line

by: erica caruana
Guest Writer

A St. Ambrose University student was arrested on Friday, Oct. 28, after attempting to steal a parking sign from SAU’s Galvin Fine Arts Center parking lot.

Junior Tyler Ryan, 22, from New Windsor, Illinois, was arrested that morning around 2 a.m.

Ryan was charged with theft, intoxication/consumption in a public place, and interfering with official acts.

"Tyler thought that one of his friends was pushed by the cops," a close friend of Ryan’s said.

"In Ryan’s defense he was just trying to be a good friend and stand up for him."

SAU security caught the theft in progress outside a Gaines Street house around 10:28 p.m.

The theft was caught by a surveillance camera the university installed after student cars were broken into and hit with rocks last spring.

As stated by court records, Ryan was seen on surveillance camera taking a concrete-based sign, valued at $450, from a campus parking lot.

Ryan smelled of alcohol, had slurred speech with watery eyes, and was off-balance as he tried to take the parking sign up a flight of stairs at a house along the 2000 block of Gaines Street.

Ryan refused to answer police questions when interviewed.