Mario Torres is the Columbia custodian depicted in the viral photograph that I posted via X here. The photo shows him fighting off one of the thugs breaking into Hamilton Hall last week. I commented that he deserves recognition as a man of the year. He is so much better than the pathetic institution he serves.
Now Free Press’s Francesca Block has tracked him down for an interview that is posted here in an unembeddable 20-minute video. Drawing on the interview, Block reports:
At one point, he remembers “looking up and I noticed the cameras are covered.” It made him think: “This was definitely planned.”
Torres was trying to “protect the building” when he ended up in an altercation with Carlson: “He had a Columbia hoodie on, and I managed to rip that hoodie off of him and expose his face.” (Carlson was later charged with five felonies, including burglary and reckless endangerment.) “I was freaking out. At that point, I’m thinking about my family. How was I gonna get out? Through the window?”
Torres has not been to campus since the incident. He says he does not feel safe. “When it comes to the public safety, the workers’ safety, people don’t feel comfortable walking through a mob to punch in to get into campus. That’s crazy,” he said.
He added that he’s worried Columbia might take disciplinary action against him for speaking out. He worries about losing a job he loves. He worries about supporting his young family.
“Is Columbia going to retaliate and find a reason to fire me? Is someone going to come after me? So I’m taking a big risk doing this, but I think that they failed. They failed us. And I think that’s the bigger story. They failed us. They should have done more to protect us, and they didn’t.”
I stand by my comment of last week, to which I would add only that Mr. Torres sounds smarter than the pro-Hamas/anti-Israel Columbia students from whom we have heard so much over the past month and that a GoFundMe page has been set up for Torres under the heading “Support Our Heroic Janitor’s Fight for Justice.”
