‘It was getting terrifying:’ students attend hearing for alleged feces-thrower

TORONTO – Dozens of university students showed up at the first court appearance for a man accused of dumping feces on strangers in Toronto.

Samuel Opoku is charged with five counts each of assault with a weapon and mischief related to three alleged attacks — two at campus libraries and a third at a downtown intersection near the University of Toronto.

The 23-year-old was arrested Tuesday night and has yet to appear before a judge as administrative matters are dealt with.

His case had to be moved to a larger courtroom to accommodate throngs of would-be onlookers, many of them students from U of T and elsewhere.

First-year student Tina Yang says curiosity drove her to the courtroom — and led her to wait several hours for the accused to appear.

She says she wants to get a sense of the reasons behind his alleged actions.

"During the first incident, we thought it was a joke," Yang said outside the courtroom. "We thought it was funny and disgusting. But then there was the second and the third one, so we thought it was getting terrifying."

Police allege a man threw liquefied fecal matter on a woman and a young person on Friday at U of T's John P. Robarts Research Library.

The same suspect is believed to have attacked a man and a woman at York University's Scott Library on Sunday, and a woman at a downtown intersection Monday night.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 27, 2019.