UW Identifies Suspect in May Sorority Intrusion

A man accused of breaking into college residence halls in New Jersey and groping young women as they slept has been linked through DNA evidence to an incident at the University of Wyoming last May.

Charges are pending in Albany County against Jon Cannon, 25, recently of Levittown, Pa. He is being held in jail in Trenton, N.J.

In the May 6 incident at UW, the UW Police Department received notice of an intruder in a sorority house in the early morning. The suspect apparently gained entry through an open window, then proceeded to masturbate in a resident’s room while she was in bed.

The UWPD, on May 6, issued a statement with a description of the suspect, who had left the house in an unknown direction. No one was apprehended at the time, but DNA evidence was collected at the scene.

In October, Cannon was admitted into the Mercer County (N.J.) Pre-Trial Intervention Program as a result of two similar incidents at Rider University in Mercer County in fall 2015. He was accused of trespassing into residence halls and groping young women as they slept.

As part of his admission into the intervention program, he submitted his DNA to investigators. That DNA was entered into a national database and found to match DNA recovered by the UWPD. With that positive match, the UWPD pursued charges against Cannon in mid-December.

“We are glad that this suspect has been apprehended and that the DNA match has provided some answers regarding our sorority house incident,” UWPD Chief Mike Samp says. “We take the safety of our students and campus community very seriously, and it is a relief that we appear to be on the road to a resolution in this case.”

In the meantime, Cannon faces additional charges for three separate incidents at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) in the Trenton suburb of Ewing Township in September and October. In the first, he is alleged to have entered a female student’s residence hall room and masturbated. In the other two, he is charged with breaking into two other rooms and groping women in each.

Cannon was last enrolled as a UW student in 2012. He was not enrolled in either of the New Jersey institutions, according to media reports.

Cannon, formerly of Hamilton, N.J., appeared Wednesday in Mercer County Superior Court, where he was ordered held on $100,000 bail on charges related to the TCNJ incidents. Efforts to extradite him to Wyoming are underway.