Miami University employee jailed, accused in reported attack on student

UPDATE @ 7 p.m.: "Blood cur(d)ling screams" is how an Oxford police officer described what he heard just before seeing a Miami University student with only one shoe on run toward him early Saturday morning.

“She was shaking and trembling with fear. I noticed that she was covered in dead grass and leaves from head to toe and her waist belt was undone,” Officer Mark Ledermeier wrote in a police report obtained by this news outlet.

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Ledermeier said the woman could hardly talk because she was breathing so heavily “from adrenaline and crying.”

The student told Ledermeier that a man had thrown her to the ground and had punched her so many times in her right ear that she was having trouble hearing out of it.

While being attacked, the woman said she saw the lights from Ledermeier’s police cruiser, which was stopped nearby as he wrote a ticket for a vehicle registration violation.

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“She stated that the male held her down on the ground and told her to ‘Shut up,’ likely because he witnessed my overhead lights as well. She stated that she fought back and punched the male several times as well to get him off her,” according to the police report.

During her screams and struggle, the man assaulting her fled on foot, the woman told police.

She later identified Brandon Levi Gilbert, who police stopped nearby on East Central Avenue, as her alleged attacker.

Gilbert works for Miami University in a “buildings and grounds” role, and has been suspended without pay until his case moves through the legal system, a university spokeswoman told our news partner WCPO-TV in Cincinnati late Monday afternoon.

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The woman said she had met Gilbert at a bar earlier that night and asked him to walk her home.

“When they got to (a backyard in the 100 block of Ardmore Avenue), he pushed her to the ground and proceeded to take her pants off and his as well,” according to the police report.

Police found the woman’s cell phone in the home’s backyard and her other shoe in the driveway.

Gilbert’s belt was found about 10 feet from the home’s driveway and his cell phone was found next to the woman’s second shoe.

FIRST REPORT

A female Miami University student was attacked this weekend near the Butler County campus, and police have arrested and charged a suspect with rape.

Oxford Police said an officer heard a woman screaming at 2:46 a.m. Saturday near the intersection of South Poplar Street and Ardmore Drive.

“The screams grew louder and when the officer exited his cruiser he observed a female running toward him,” according to a statement released Monday by Oxford Police.

The 21-year-old Miami student “frantically reported that she had just been sexually assaulted in a nearby yard by a male she had just met, but whose name she did not know,” police said.

The victim was able to tell police officers the direction the suspect had fled, and he was located within minutes, according to police.

The victim positively identified the suspect as 22-year-old Brandon Levi Gilbert, who police said is not listed as a Miami University student.

Gilbert was arrested and charged with rape, a first degree felony, along with kidnapping, also a first degree felony, and assault, which is a first degree misdemeanor, said police.

Gilbert remains in the Butler County Jail as police continue to investigate.

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