Three M.I.T. Men Stopped At 'Cliffe After Two Shots

A Cambridge policeman fired two shots in the Radcliffe Quardrangle about 3 a.m. yesterday to halt three M.I.T. students who, according to one of them, were trying "to pull a hometown prank."

The three, all nineteen years old, were arrested for disturbing the peace and are scheduled to appear in East Cambridge district court today at 9 a.m. Free at present after posting 20-dollar bail each, they are John A. Friedman M.I.T. '57, Luther S. Harris M.I.T. '59, and Robert N. Rich M.I.T. '58.

"We were looking for apples to throw at the window of a girl we know when the policeman fired," Friedman said last night. "After the first shot, we naturally started to run. When he fired again and threatened to hit us, we stopped," he continued.

Friedman added that his two friends both came from the same town as the girl they were trying to awaken. "Rich is famous down there for pulling this sort of a prank all the time," he said. Friedman is from New York, Rich and Harris from Haddonfield, N.J.

The shots were fired into the ground by patrolman George E. Mercier, stationed on the Radcliffe campus. Shortly after he had halted the students three squard cars arrived, one of them summoned by complaints of local residents, and the other two by Mercier.

Two Barnard Hall girls who were talking on the fourth floor when the incident occurred claimed the students were shouting such phrases as "come down here" and "you killed my mother and I'll kill you," before Mercier fired the shots. They also said the three were "climbing trees and pounding on the doors of Eliot and Whitman.