First-year students who live on the top floor of Pennypacker Hall are used to looking out their windows seeing panoramic views of Harvard Yard, which lies just beyond.

But around I a.m. Wednesday morning, several students saw something quite different: a drunk man waving a loaded Colt .45 handgun.

The students quickly called Harvard police, which dispatched all of its on-duty squad cars to the site.

Officers arriving on the scene found the gun-wielding man--a Cambridge resident in his thirties-- speaking in a very loud voice to his friend, whom police say had also been drinking.

"It was a very, very dangerous situation for a guys to respond to," said Harvard police Lt. John F. Rooney. "This could have gone bad real fast."

The officers peacefully disarmed and interviewed the man, who had a permit for the firearm, Rooney said. "But just because you have a permit for a gun doesn't mean you can go waving it around," he added.

Officers recovered the semi-auto-matic gun and two laded magazines, which are being held at police headquarters. The incident is currently under investigation, Rooney said.

Break-in Suspect Nabbed

Some legwork by Harvard police Detective Paul Westlund has led to the arrest of a suspect police say is "a real one-man crime wave."

The suspect was indicted yesterday in connection with break-ins at two locations, both of which are managed by Harvard Planning and Real Estate.

The first break-in occurred in one of the apartments at 20 Prescott St. on Sept. 7 of last year. Based on fingerprints taken from that crime scene, Harvard police linked the perpetrator of that break-in to the person responsible for an Oct. 27 breakin at 37 Kirkland St.

But police indicated that they believe that the suspect may be responsible for other break-ins.

"We can't even say how many breaks he might be responsible for in the greater Cambridge area," Det. Westlund said.

"He's already confessed to one break...and we've matched the suspect's prints from the one crime scene to the other," Westlund said. "So this is a very solid case."

Westlund said that Harvard officers William Chipman and Brian Lakin were instrumental in securing the crime scene where the key finger prints were found.

A man sleeping at home in his Harvard-owned apartment on Banks St. was the victim of a home invasion in mid-November, in which another man attempted to break into his apartment through the front window.

The victim, whom police declined to identify, was awakened at around 8:30 a.m. by a noise in his front room.

"He got up to look, and the suspect was climbing in through the window he had just broken into," Detective Westlund said.

The detective said that when the apartment owner called police, the suspect "made a spontaneous statement that he may have been in the wrong place--that he was looking for his girl-friend's apartment--and subsequently left out the front door in a hurry."

The victim identified the suspect in a photo on Nov. 27, and the suspect was arrested on Dec. 4. He was later released on bail, but returned, police say, to the very same apartment to threaten the owner against testifying.

On Dec. 23, the suspect was charged with intimidation of a witness and was arrested Wednesday on that charge