BRISTOL — Three men involved in a Sept. 20 altercation outside the Almeida Apartments where they were guests of a student have been ordered to stay off RWU property, according to Vice President of Student Life John King. 

The university issued no trespass orders to the three men, which remain in effect until the university decides to withdraw them, King told The Hawks’ Herald. 

“The teeth in it is if somebody comes back they can be arrested,” King said.

The three men were involved in a verbal altercation with some RWU students outside of the Almeida complex on Bayview Avenue on Friday night, according to King. He said some university students “suspected they saw what they believed could have been a weapon.”  

But the students did not report their suspicions to RWU Public Safety until Saturday at around 10:45 p.m. when the men were at a gathering inside one of the campus apartment buildings, King said.

However, he confirmed there was not a weapon present at Almeida on either night.

King wrote in a Sept. 23 all-student email that he wanted to clear any misinformation going around about this incident. 

“Nobody saw it and there never was [a weapon],” King said of the Friday incident in an interview.

King said Bristol Police investigated the report at Almeida on Saturday night.

“Bristol Police fully investigated and searched the vehicle that non-students had come to campus with. Those non-students had indicated to [the police] an item in the vehicle that they thought could have been misconstrued,” King told The Hawks’ Herald. 

According to King, the item located was not a weapon but a “tool with a black rubber grip.”

“That’s what Bristol Police believed was seen originally on Friday night,” King said.

In this situation, King said the host student was “very cooperative” and the non-student guests were all cooperative with Bristol PD. 

King said protocol would have taken effect if there was a true safety threat to campus.

“If the preliminary investigation determined it was a real sighting and threat to student safety, we would have initiated some form of a lockdown at Almeida and communicated that to all students via the Rave Guardian system,” King said.

King was referring to an emergency notification app that tracks every student’s contact information. It is the system the university uses for school closings and other urgent announcements.

In the future, King said he wants to improve internal communication by involving all RAs in “specific residence area communications,” so they can communicate information to their residents in order to prevent any rumors from spreading.