Groups of men rob students near campus

They were in a group of four, they were sober, and they were in a public place. They weren't supposed to get mugged.

Senior journalism and government and politics major Marissa Lang said later she knew "muggings can happen to anyone" but wasn't thinking of herself as a potential victim as she got into a car outside the Clarion Hotel at Route 1 and Berwyn Road about 12:45 a.m. Friday.

Then a gunman pulled her out of the car.

Lang and her companions were one of two groups of students robbed in College Park since Friday — five men mugged three students waiting for a bus on Berwyn House Road at 1:34 a.m. yesterday, according to a crime alert from Prince George's County Police.

In the Friday mugging, three students — all editors at The Diamondback — and a 2009 alumna had just left a karaoke night at the EJ's Landing restaurant when three men dressed in black approached their Jeep Cherokee, the students said.

Adele Hampton, a senior journalism major, said she first saw one of the men approach Lang's door on the other side of the car, walking up to them with his shirt pulled up over the bottom half of his face.

The man pulled Lang out of the car by her purse, bruising her arm, but she said she fought for it. When he eventually ripped it from her arm and pushed her back into the car, she chased him down.

"Bitch, get back in the car!" she said the man yelled to her.

"F--- you!" she shouted back.

That's when Lang said the mugger pulled out what appeared to be a gun from under his shirt, placed it against her shoulder and muscled her back into the car.

She said she kicked him in the stomach before he slammed her door as the car pulled away.

"You know how you get that adrenaline rush, and it's either fight or flight?" Lang said. "I fought."

Hampton said she was watching Lang's fight on the other side of the rear seat when she suddenly realized there was also someone on her side trying to grab her leg and pull her out of the car. She said she kicked and pushed the man away and slammed the door shut.

"It was just surreal," Hampton said. "The whole time, I was thinking, what the f--- is happening?"

Meanwhile, the third student, who asked not to be identified, said a third man was patting down his pockets and ultimately ripped off a ring he wore around his neck and punched him in the face.

Then the driver — alumna Miri Breitstein, who never had a mugger at her door — pulled away, and the muggers fled down Berwyn Road, the students said.

Two students called police, and the third flagged down a nearby county police cruiser, they said.

Police told the students that two of the men were arrested shortly thereafter, the students said. Police did not respond to questions from reporters this weekend.

The students said police recovered the stolen ring but not Lang's purse, in which she had her cell phone, camera, wallet — with credit cards, IDs, her driver's license and $60 in cash — and a poem her mother had given her before she left for college.

"My whole life was in that purse," Lang said.

In yesterday's mugging, three students were waiting at a Shuttle-UM stop in the 4800 block of Berwyn House Road — in front of the University Club at College Park apartment complex — according to the crime alert.

A man approached the students and asked them if they were waiting for a bus, and they said they were, the alert said.

The man left and returned with four other men, who told the students they were being robbed.

It was not clear how much time elapsed before the man returned; police could not be reached for comment yesterday.

According to the crime alert, two of the students ran to the nearby College Park Volunteer Fire Department at Route 1 and Lakeland Road, but the third was punched several times in the face. The men fled on foot with an undisclosed amount of his money.

The crime alert described the first man who approached the students as a black man, about 26 years old, 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighing 150 pounds and wearing a blue hat, white shirt and blue jeans.

It described one of his companions as a black man with dreadlocks wearing a green shirt and green hat and the other three as black men.

Police requested that anyone with information about the crime contact them at (301) 722-4908.

Staff writer Ben Present contributed to this report.

villanueva at umdbk dot com