Unrefilled Brita Pitcher Leaves 2 Roommates Dead, One Injured

CAMPUS — Tragedy struck Wednesday evening in an Alumni Square apartment in what has been called one of the worst cases of passive-aggressive roommate-on-roommate violence this semester.

Matt Morrison (MSB ’11) returned from class at 6:13 p.m. to find that his Brita-brand water-filtering pitcher, which he had just filled up that morning, no longer had any water in it, Metro police said. After receiving no response from his roommates, who were playing Wii in the living room, Morrison opened fire.

Colin Roeper (COL ’11) was killed instantly, according to GERMS responders at the scene, and Ben O’Cleary (SFS ’11) died later of chest wounds at Georgetown University Hospital. Elliot Cohen (COL ’11) was released later from the hospital.

“I guess it was only a matter of time until Matt cracked,” said Cohen, who managed to escape with only a shot to the leg after threatening to get blood on Morrison’s precious John Beckett poster. “Unfortunately, we completely ignored the warning signs because Matt’s really bitchy.”

Morrison’s parents purchased the filter for him at Target before he arrived on campus last year. Room- and floor-mates repeatedly used his filter since then, which is fine, but they should have refilled it, DPS said.

“What we have here is the tragic lesson you get when someone touches your stuff in the refrigerator without asking,” said Director of Public Safety Jeff Van Slyke, who was first to respond to the scene because he was beating with a nightstick a student who had taken two Washington Posts from a newspaper box in Alumni Square. “Same thing happened to me when I was at Ole Miss: Someone took the AK-47 I brought to [the campus police offices] for lunch out of the fridge, and I had to shoot him. It’s unfortunate.”

Morrison has had run-ins with DPS before, Van Slyke admitted. In February of this year, Morrison threatened a girl who disagreed with his views on Kant, and in May, he was removed from Lauinger Library for breaking a copy machine that another student was using to print hundreds of pages of PowerPoint.

Van Slyke noted that DPS has responds to hundreds of cases of passive-aggressive violence at Georgetown each year, but no student had ever killed anyone yet this year.

Morrison released a statement through his lawyer earlier today.

“The biggest threats to Americans today are unrefilled Brita pitchers, people eating other people’s Easy Mac, and using another person’s printer to print out a paper at the last minute without asking,” Morrison said. “People like me who deal with these tragedies may be downtrodden and feel powerless, but we can change things if we stand up and take action.” He admitted guilt in the statement, but did not express regret.

Morrison’s father, a high-level official in the federal government, is working to get Brita filters and Dean & Deluca sushi into the D.C. prison system, along with a changing prison uniforms to ones made by Vineyard Vines.