HARTFORD -- Campus police at Trinity College are investigating after someone fired several paintball shots at a student on Saturday.
Investigators said the perpetrator wore a "Scream" Halloween mask and was in a maroon sedan. They're looking into the incident, which occurred on Crescent Street.
"I got a text from my buddy saying that we got light up by paintball guns," said Jack Boucher, a sophomore who lives in the on-campus house now covered with splattered paint. "Somebody came by and shot at our house."
Boucher said he wasn't home at the time of the paintball shooting but that his roommates saw the immediate aftermath.
"There were a couple of guys coming back. They came around and they talked to a girl who was shooken [sic]. I guess she was right there when it happened and luckily she wasn't hit but yea it was very, I guess, intimidating and scary," Boucher said.
At least two homes on Allen Street -- which is on the other side of campus -- also had paintball remnants near the front doors and steps. Benjamin Hjalmarsson said those shootings happened the same night as the incident on Crescent Street.
"My friends were really scared," the senior said. " They thought it was gunshots at first so they kind of dove down but then when they got in they were laughing."
He and other students tell FOX 61 News that they don't believe this was a prank by their peers.
"They said what they could see in the car wasn't Trinity people. They said they were way older, like 30," said Hjalmarsson of his friends who saw the perpetrators.
Hjalmarsson didn't recall anyone having paint hit them. Campus police reported there were no injuries.
Meanwhile, Hjalmarsson's landlord, Steve Weinstein, was surprised to hear about the paintball incidents because he says the area is safe and has "very little problems."
"We have video cameras, we have alarms in the building," Weinstein said, adding that those measures are "rarely relied upon."
"I think Hartford is a lot safer than the perception that a lot of people have," the landlord said.
Trinity College officials as well as investigators with campus police deferred all questions about this case to Hartford police.
Dep. Chief Brian Foley said paintball incidents ramp up around Halloween.
