In the wake of what the Times-Picayune called “a misguided hoax,” a puzzled Loyola community is trying to move on as three students face multiple counts of attempted armed robbery.

After 20 years as a sociologist specializing in crime research, Loyola vice provost and sociology professor George Capowich said he’s “probably” never seen anything like the criminal prank police accuse Chukwuemeka Anigbo, Mohamed Diakite and John A. White of committing.

Several pedestrians strolling in Uptown neighborhoods told police finance junior Anigbo, management freshman Diakite, and biology freshman White of demanding money from them as they brandished pistols from the window of a black Nissan Altima with Texas license plates. Police, after they arrested the trio in the early morning hours of Oct. 4 on charges of attempted armed robberies they are accused of committing on Oct. 3, discovered the guns they used were toys. When it came time to take their victims’ wallets or purses, reports show they turned the opportunity down and sped away in laughter.

According to Capowich, the legal definition of an act classified as attempted robbery requires only that the stick-up crew create “fear.”

“It doesn’t matter if it was a toy gun in terms of the legal definition of how to rob someone,” Capowich said. “To them, it was a prank, but they weren’t giving thought to the fear that they placed in people.”

Criminal justice professor Dee W. Harper added, “Attempted robbery with a cap gun gets you in the same amount of trouble with the law as with a real one.”

And for what is being called a prank played out at the tip of what was either a cap or air pistol, three Loyola students could spend between five and 48 1/2 years in prison.

Anigbo, Diakite and White’s pranks however, appear to have started much earlier. One of their first laughs seemingly came at the expense of a fellow Loyola student.

Late Sept. 22, Loyola student “Jay” was “just walking” down Freret Street toward Broadway Street when he sensed a car pull off to the side of the road, facing toward him. Glancing over, Jay noticed it was “a black Nissan with Texas plates” but tried to avoid eye contact with the people in the car.

“Hey!” one of the passengers shouted at him. “You got any money?”

After ignoring them at first, Jay noticed out of the corner of his eye that the passenger stuck something out of the window, and when he finally turned, he realized it was a gun. Then, he said, they demanded his wallet again.

He reached for it and said, “I’ll give you what I got.” But before Jay could get to the window to hand it over, the passenger fired off two shots that “made a hissing noise, not a bang. It sounded like an AirSoft gun,” Jay said.

Realizing they weren’t shooting real bullets, he told the passengers to get lost. They sped off toward Broadway, and he continued on to his destination.

The following day, Jay filed a police report with Officer Elmer Johnston of University Police. On Oct. 8, he learned that NOPD may book all three with attempted robbery for the incident.

Anigbo, Diakite and White spent Oct. 4 in Orleans Parish Central Lockup. A municipal judge then set each of their bonds at $250,000, while Loyola administrators suspended them from campus for seven days and said they would be subject to an Office of Student Affairs disciplinary hearing. Later, they learned that they each faced between five and 48 1/2 years in prison for each count of attempted robbery that police accused them of.

Their case, Capowich said, illustrates “a lack of thinking about future consequences.” He added that it’s common for college-age students to lack the cognitive and emotional capacities that allow them to accurately gauge future consequences, because these capacities don’t really mature “until the mid-20s.”

Diakite is 20, while both Anigbo and White are 18.

“What happens is that people react in the moment without thinking about what the consequences of their actions will be,” he said. “Young people, even intelligent ones, for a variety of reasons, don’t think about the future. They are more prone to risky behavior of all kinds, and this research even shows that that’s true about things in the workplace. They’ll more likely fly off the handle and quit a job or insult the boss without thinking, ‘What will this do to my career?’ Now, most people don’t do (what Anigbo, Diakite or White are accused of doing), but they’ll do other things and not think about the consequences in the future.”

Capowich said that part of the trio likely exercised a measure of peer pressure on the other.

“At some level, they had to know it was wrong,” Capowich said. “Yet, of the three of them, it didn’t occur to any of them to say, ‘Wait a minute, guys, what are we doing?'”

UPTOWN REACTS

When the Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J., university president, broke the news about the Loyola trio’s arrest through a university-wide e-mail, Internet users sped online to comment on The Maroon’s and the Times-Picayune’s follow-up reports.

Nola.com user “skarnik” wrote in a mangled posting, “Loyola undergrads are morons, they major in bong hits and phish music. I’m surprised they took a break from their tree hugging scheduling to do something stupid. Lock em up.”

Others on The Maroon’s Web site expressed concern over Loyola’s admissions standards and what Anigbo, Diakite and White’s reported prank was doing to the public perception of the university.

But students like finance senior Antonio Guardiola think it’s best to move on.

“You will always find people who do foolish acts to create a false image. The best that we can do now is to serve our community in the best way possible.

“Most people may think it may damage the image of the university as a whole, but the most important thing is to consider that no one got hurt. Everyone has an opinion. But they’re just opinions, not necessarily a fact imposed on the university.”

Rachel Crosbie, an English writing junior, has a unique perspective as a recent mugging victim.

While she smoked a cigarette on the front steps of her next door neighbor’s house on Octavia Street on Oct. 6 at 2:40 a.m., a pair of men covering their faces with blue and black bandanas leapt out from nearby and pointed guns at her and a companion sitting next to her.

They demanded their wallets, but when Crosbie couldn’t come up with hers, they just took her companion’s and scurried away in a panic.

“They were young, they didn’t know what they were doing and they seemed about as nervous as we were,” she said. “They looked uncomfortable holding their guns, which made me the most nervous.”

Crosbie, although she filed a report with New Orleans 2nd District police, said she doesn’t want her assailants to get arrested. Likewise, she hopes the prank stick-up crew isn’t punished to the law’s fullest extent.

“Yeah, I want my friend to get his wallet back so he can have his driver’s license, but I don’t want them to go to jail. I just don’t want them to ever, ever do it again,” she said.

“It’s just, how do you resolve that? All I know is that (48 1/2) years is ridiculously excessive.”

Ramon Antonio Vargas can be reached at [email protected].