OREM, UT—Details are just beginning to pour in regarding an incident in the Allred Apartments complex, in which a college-aged roommate is alleged to have washed and put away dishes that were previously dirty.
Undergraduate student Mark Lorentz, 20, first noticed that something was out of the ordinary when he returned home from his 3:30 economics course on Tuesday. "I was pretty tired after a long day," he shared. "I was planning on having a little snack and then maybe napping, but then as soon as I closed the door, I noticed something was off."
Lorentz explained that he was immediately made uneasy by the lack of dishes in their sink. "I was certain that I had left a bowl in there from my [Frosted Flakes] cereal that morning. I got really scared right then."
The history major related that he immediately began searching through the apartment for any other missing or out-of-place items, but found everything else to be in its usual state of disorder. "I really thought we might have been robbed [burglarized]."
Lorentz eventually pieced together a theory about what may have happened when he found the missing bowl in a small compartment near the apartment's automatic dishwasher, to which he referred as a "cupboard."
"I was really confused at that point. See, normally the sink acts as a sort of rotating dish preparation area. I'll hand-wash whatever I need for a meal, and then right back into the sink it goes. I didn't even know this place had a garbage disposal until today," said Lorentz, who has lived in the apartment since August 2018.
The most probable scenario Lorentz can devise is that one of his other two roommates must have purchased or otherwise located dishwasher soap, meticulously loaded the dirtied dishes from the sink into the automatic dishwasher, and then allowed the machine to run a cycle. Such a thing is not entirely unheard of in this particular part of town, but what makes this especially unusual is to find that the suspect also emptied the dishwasher after it had completed its cycle.
"Now I'm super freaked out," commented Lorentz. "I mean, this could mean that [roommate] Eric [Jeter, 19] dropped out for the semester. Worse yet, maybe Alice [Bennett, 18] broke up with him. I don't see this being the work of [other roommate Stephen] Hodge, though. He's really not the type."
As of press time, Lorentz was texting mutual friends to find the whereabouts of both roommates to see if anyone could help piece together a timeline for the odd goings-on of the afternoon.