Five Loyola students were the victims of two separate armed robberies last week.
Both robberies happened in the vicinity of bars popular with students.
According to University Police, at about 11 p.m. on Oct. 29, a man and two women, all Loyola students, were returning from T.J. Quill’s on Maple Street.
The students were approached at the intersection of Maple and Pine streets by two black men, UP said. Both suspects were armed with chrome automatic handguns. After taking the purses of both women and discharging their weapons into the ground, the robbers got into a gold or silver Dodge Intrepid and drove toward Broadway Street.
At about 3:45 the next morning, a man and a woman, also Loyola students, were robbed while walking toward Loyola at the 7100 Block of Freret Street, about a block away from Broadway Street, authorities said. Both students reported hearing car doors close ahead of them and seeing two black men walking toward them.
One of the victims said he did not feel safe as the two men passed and attempted to call someone on a cell phone, UP said. As he looked back, he saw both men running toward them. The students began to run, but they were caught from behind and knocked to the ground, according to the report.
The robbers took the woman’s purse.
News of the robberies has left some Loyola students questioning their safety off campus.
“I definitely feel more vulnerable,” communications sophomore Melissa Lyons said. “I won’t walk anywhere past dark.”
Some students have stressed that not enough is being done to deal with crime around the University area.
“There’s always been people who have gotten robbed going to and from bars around here,” psychology sophomore Melanie Rabalais said, “but I rarely see any cops patrolling the areas between bars and campus.”
Statistics from the New Orleans Police Department’s Web site show that while crime is down in the 2nd District, which encompasses Loyola, Tulane, and most of the Uptown area, armed robbery is up by more than eight percent.
The NOPD’s site also showed that in the past four weeks, there have been seventeen cases of armed robbery, four cases of simple robbery and three incidents of purse snatching in or around the 2nd District.
Last week, there were three reported instances of armed robbery, two instances of auto theft, one instance of auto burglary and a home burglary along St. Charles Avenue from Audubon Boulevard to South Carrollton Avenue.
For those living off campus, the situation is especially worrisome. International business and economics junior Barby Free lives on Hillary Street, just off of Maple Street.
“Because I live in the area,” Free said, “I’m starting to feel unsafe in my own neighborhood. You’d assume that the police would patrol the area more because of college students.”
Students who live on campus do have a safe alternative to walking. The Prowler, funded by the Student Government Association, takes Loyola students from Main and Broadway campuses to intersections that are close to several neighborhood bars.
However, the Prowler, which averages about forty minutes per round trip, can be too long a wait for some.
“It can take forever sometimes,” Lyons said. “Most people don’t want to wait forty five minutes to an hour, so they just walk instead.”
Rabalais said that a stronger presence by the NOPD near Uptown bars would help restore a sense of security.
“Obviously there’s a problem here, and someone needs to pay more attention to it,” Rabalais said. “If we could have cops making rounds between the bars, I would feel ten times safer.”
