The Diamondback

Gunman robs student on College Ave.

Fourth mugging in two weeks is latest in series of crimes, including holdup at D.P. Dough

By Leah Villanueva

Staff writer

Published: Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Updated: Thursday, July 1, 2010

A student was robbed at gunpoint as he walked back from the College Park Metro Station along College Avenue early Wednesday, police said, the latest of four muggings in and around the Old Town neighborhood in the last two weeks.

According to a crime alert sent out Wednesday morning, three men in a green Toyota pulled up behind the student near the Dartmouth Avenue intersection, and one of them displayed a black handgun as they demanded property from the student.

A spokesman for the Prince George's County Police wouldn't say what, if anything, the men actually stole from the student.

Six days before, in another College Avenue robbery, police said two female students were attacked and robbed of their purses by two other women at the Dickinson Avenue intersection. Robberies in the area also occurred on Calvert Road and near the Old Leonardtown dorm last month.

These incidents also join a recent robbery and a theft at the Campus Village shopping center near the University View. Two gunmen held up the D.P. Dough store early Sunday morning, police said, and a thief grabbed money from the cash register at the tanning salon next door two weeks before, according to salon employees.

As of Wednesday, police said they had made no arrests in connection with the crimes.

In last Thursday's mugging, two people described as black women in their 20s approached the two students just before 2 a.m., began punching them and knocked them to the ground, according to a crime alert sent out last Thursday. The robbers grabbed the students' purses and fled; the students were not injured.

Police described the suspects in the Wednesday morning incident asthree black men, each about 20 years old. The gunman was described as standing 5 feet, 11 inches tall and weighing about 170 pounds, with short hair and wearing a baggy white T-shirt and blue jeans; the other two men were described only as wearing dark clothes.

After last month's series of robberies, some students said they feel the need to be more cautious in their neighborhoods.

"I used to not be scared by this stuff, but now I see it can happen to anyone," said junior public health major Nana Sasu, who lives in Old Leonardtown near the two recent Old Town muggings. "I do feel, in a sense, less safe. I'm more careful when I walk home at night."

The fact that Wednesday's muggers were women also caught some students' attention.

"I think when people usually walk outside at night, they're on the lookout for guys, not girls, and look what happened," said sophomore letters and sciences major Elise Arao, who also lives in Old Leonardtown.

In the D.P. Dough robbery, police said an employee — who is not a student — was closing up the store at about 3 a.m. Sunday when the two men entered the store. One of the men displayed a shotgun and the other a handgun, and the pair netted approximately $500 in cash, police said.

Police described the two suspects as 18- to 22-year-old black men. The first, who carried the shotgun, was described as standing about 6 feet tall, weighing around 170 pounds, wearing all black with a black mask and black gloves, and wearing his hair in braids; the second, who carried the handgun, stood about 5 feet, 8 inches tall and weighed about 160 pounds, police said.

A county police spokesman said the department had trouble downloading surveillance footage from the incident.

Two weeks earlier, a man entered North Beach Tanning, next door to D.P. Dough, asked the cashier to make change, then stole cash from the open register and ran out, according to an employee at the salon. Employees said the culprit — described only as a white man — made off with about $165 and noted that the salon has no surveillance system.

In other crime news, three MacBook computers and two smartphones — collectively valued at $7,875 — were stolen from a locked room in the A.V. Williams Building at about 10 a.m. June 21, University Police spokesman Marc Limansky said. University Police are investigating the theft.

villanueva at umdbk dot com

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