Sacramento State police officers responded to the second floor of the Library on reports of an incident of indecent exposure April 29 afternoon.

The victim involved was a female Sac State student who, while studying, recognized an unidentified male sitting about 40 feet away from her sitting and appeared to be masturbating under the cover of a newspaper.

The man then removed the paper and exposed his penis outside of his shorts to the female, according to police reports.

The suspect was not looking at or saying anything to the victim, said Lt. Dan Davis of the University Police. The female reported the suspect to Library staff immediately. The building was checked, but there was no sign of the suspect.

Library assistant Frankie Michaelson said after reviewing security video that the suspect looked like “a distinguished gentleman.”

“He didn’t look suspicious from the surveillance video,” Michaelson said.

Police describe the suspect as a black male around 60 years old, between five-feet 10 inches to five-feet 11 inches, approximately 170 pounds with nearly completely shaved black hair.

He was wearing a red or orange baseball cap, grey t-shirt, dark color shorts and possibly carrying a backpack.

“We’re going to treat this like any other misdemeanor,” David said.

Davis said that if the suspect is apprehended he will turned him over to the District Attorney for prosecution.

The case becomes increasingly difficult to solve given the inability to clearly identify the suspect, let alone eliminating it as a threat, Davis said.

The case has left many students questioning whether or not they will continue to use the Library on days when there aren’t many people in the library.

“I feel the Library should be a safe place for students to come and study,” said junior communication studies major, Katie Scharnott. “Especially on a Sunday afternoon, it wasn’t late at night or anything, so I wouldn’t want to be subjected to that.”

“It makes me not want to come to the Library,” Scharnott said.

“A college Library shouldn’t be an unsafe place to be. Even though there are security guards present, it still makes me uneasy,” Scharnott said.

The incident did prompt Michaelson to think of boosting the amount of security cameras throughout the Library.

Michaelson mentioned that Library security was trying to complete a project that would feed Library security cameras into the campus police’s security video to better serve the Library’s security staff.

Josh Staab can be reached at [email protected]