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Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Issue 18, Volume 84
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Phone, wallet, keys CRIME MCKENZI MISIASZEK & GREG FAILS @MISIASZEKUH
@GREGFAILS
River Phillips sat in his car in a dark corner of the Bayou Oaks parking lot. He’d just finished a phone call with a friend when two men opened his passenger and driver’s side doors. They pointed a gun at his face and demanded his phone, wallet and keys. He gave them his wallet and phone, leaving the keys in the ignition. When the robbers couldn’t figure out how to unlock his phone, they gave it back and demanded he get out of the car to do it himself. Phone
in hand, Phillips saw the robber glance away and took his chance to escape. “As soon as the guy with the pistol looked into the car, I took off,” Phillips said. He ran to the back entrance of Bayou Oaks shouting for help while the robbers sped off in his car. Phillips, a management information and marketing senior, was the third and final victim in a string of robberies that spanned two weeks in early January across campus parking garages and lots. All three robberies happened south of Wheeler Ave. and involved suspects taking the victims’ cars.
LIFE & ARTS
In the first case, a student was rollerblading on the top floor of the Cullen Oaks garage Jan. 7 when he was attacked by two suspects after refusing to give them his phone and car keys. The second happened on the evening of Jan. 12 in Lot 4A, where five suspects demanded a student’s keys at gunpoint before fleeing the scene on foot and in the victim’s car. Phillips’s robbery occurred three days later, less than two blocks away. Many students found themselves on edge from the resulting flurry of security alerts that had accompanied their first week of classes.
“I was definitely a little scared,” said biochemistry freshman Zaimab Asif. “This is my first time parking on campus, so I was feeling a little unsettled.”
Search for suspects The same morning that students received the email alert about Phillips’s robbery, UHPD Chief Ceaser Moore Jr. announced that campus security and police patrols would be increasing as they worked with HPD to track down suspects. At the time one arrest had been made: the driver of the vehicle in the second robbery who was apprehended within an
SPORTS
hour and a half of the incident, according to UHPD. “I want to reinforce our commitment to campus safety,” Moore said in an email to students and faculty. “Any crime against any member of the University of Houston community is a crime against all of us.” Six days later, Moore announced in a video to students and staff that eight out of the 10 suspects had been caught and charged in connection to the robberies. “Hello Cougar family,” Moore
PHONE, WALLET, KEYS CONTINUES ON PAGE
OPINION
Rediscovering the #HTownSpeedCity Hit us with your continues poetry genre best shot Artists sharing on social media is on the rise and here’s how it’s affecting the literary form. | PG. 6
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The Opinion Section offers hot takes and argumentative columns, and we love your responses. | PG. 10