BOSTON — A registered sex offender who was already banned from Northeastern University's campus hid inside a women's bathroom stall for over an hour, spied on a woman by craning his neck under the stall divider, attacked the officers who caught him, and tried to bite one of their holstered guns.
He was wearing a GPS ankle monitor at the time. A Boston judge set his bail at $500.
Brandon Awogboro, 29, of Boston — a registered Level 2 sex offender, meaning the state has deemed him a moderate risk to reoffend — was arrested on April 29 at approximately 6:26 p.m. at Stetson East Residence Hall on Northeastern's campus after a dining hall employee reported that someone was watching her from an adjacent stall.
According to the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office, the employee observed Awogboro "craning his neck under the stall divider to view into her stall." He had already been inside the women's bathroom for over an hour before triggering an emergency door alarm while trying to flee.
When officers located Awogboro outside the building, he sprinted directly into one of them. He resisted arrest, attacked the responding officers, attempted to bite them, and placed his mouth on one officer's holstered firearm.
He was arraigned in Boston Municipal Court in Roxbury on charges of trespassing, assault and battery on a police officer, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Judge David Poole set bail at $500 and ordered GPS monitoring with an exclusionary zone around Northeastern's campus.
Five hundred dollars. For a registered sex offender wearing an ankle monitor who had already been banned from campus, hid in a women's bathroom for an hour, and attacked police.
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Already on probation — with a record to match
Awogboro is no stranger to the justice system. He is currently on probation following a 2024 conviction for breaking and entering and assault and battery, which carried a one-and-a-half-year House of Correction sentence. He also faces a pending charge of assault and battery on a family member in a separate Roxbury case — and had his bail revoked in that case.
He was wearing an ELMO GPS monitoring device when he was arrested at Northeastern.
Despite all of this — a sex offender registry, active probation, a prior campus trespass ban, an ankle monitor, and a pending violent charge — the system returned him to the streets for the cost of a nice dinner.
A pattern Massachusetts knows too well
Awogboro's $500 bail is not an outlier. It's part of a pattern that has played out in Massachusetts courtrooms again and again this year:
- A man with sexual abuse charges in four states trapped a child in a restaurant bathroom — bail set at $1,500.
- A Boston man with two decades of violent convictions sexually assaulted an MBTA bus driver — $500 bail.
- A drunk driver who killed two people in a fiery crash in Brockton — $5,000 bail.
- A career criminal later released on $0 bail went on to commit a fatal carjacking after Rachael Rollins' office dismissed a felony strangulation charge.
- A carjacker with 47 prior charges walked out on $0 bail — the judge was appointed by Governor Healey.
- Two men who showed up with cash to meet a 15-year-old at a Lowell hotel — $0 bail. Both walked free the next day.
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A campus under siege
This isn't the first time the Northeastern area has made headlines for violent crime this year.
In April, two Boston police officers were rushed to the hospital after a man attacked them with a sword on Hemenway Street — steps from campus. The police union blamed DA Kevin Hayden for a culture of leniency that they say has left officers "waiting to get stabbed."
The same incident prompted a broader conversation about the failure of social-worker-first policing — a city clinician responding to the call was also attacked.
Now a registered sex offender is caught lurking in a women's bathroom on the same campus — already banned, already monitored, already on probation — and walks out the door for less than a night at a hotel.
Students and parents paying $60,000 a year for a Northeastern education might reasonably ask what exactly that tuition is buying in terms of safety.
Awogboro is due back in court on May 26 for a pre-trial hearing.
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