Editor’s note: The student in the following story requested that his name not be published.
The University of Tampa student that was robbed at gunpoint Nov. 7, only a short distance away from the site where Ryan McCall was robbed and murdered three months ago, says he’s learned his lesson.
On his way home from a house in North Tampa, the student and three of his friends, who also go to UT, were walking along North Boulevard when a man on the side of the road stopped the student and asked him if he wanted to buy drugs.
“We were just walking back over the [Eugene Holtsinger] bridge and that is when it all happened,” the student said.
The student refused the drug offer and then the suspect took out a gun from his pocket, held it along his side pointing down and demanded whatever the student had. According to the student, the others backed away. The suspect only referred to the victim, since he was the closest.
According to the student, he gave the suspect his wallet containing $5 and his ID as well as a cell phone.
“We walked away and that was it,” the student said. The reports indicate that once the suspect had the student’s belongings he fled into the North Boulevard Housing Complex.
“I was pissed off at first but then I realized maybe I should have just ignored him and kept walking,” the student said. “Lesson learned there.”
Currently, TPD is looking at a possible connection between this event and Ryan McCall’s murder.
Neither the Tampa Police Department’s incident report nor UT’s safety alert mentioned that there were three other students involved. Two members of the group returned to their rooms before the student and his friend reported the incident to TPD and UT Campus Safety and Security, who were outside Straz hall in response to another incident involving a taxi driver.
They filled out a report on the spot.
The student said that TPD was a lot less helpful. The student said that they laughed at him and said that he shouldn’t have been walking down there.
“The fact was, I was walking there and I did get robbed,” he said.
He was upset that they didn’t handle the situation seriously, and feared that there could have been other students walking home at the same time.
UT Security did what they could to help him.
Though the student had heard about what happened to Ryan McCall, he walked the same route before and after the event.
“It really didn’t click with me that it could happen to me,” the student said.
According to the student, the friends that were present at robbery didn’t think it was a good idea that he spoke with the suspect, but later became sympathetic.
“It was a learning experience,” he told them.
Just the other day, after the robbery, the student said he was riding his bike by a gas station and there was someone sitting in the back and that person asked him to come over. The student just kept on riding.
The student believes that UT’s safety alerts are necessary but he doesn’t believe they are that effective.
“I don’t know if sending an email is gonna stop [students],” he said.
He said that the alerts should emphasize less of the fact that, “you shouldn’t be doing this, like you shouldn’t be walking over here alone at this point of time.”
The student believes alerts should focus more on being aware of what’s around you.
For example, in his case, being aware that he was in a rough neighborhood.
He also believes that students should be more aware that if they see someone and that person tries to talk to them that they need to get out of that situation as fast and as safe as possible
He suggested that topics such as these be covered in Gateways for freshman or even in campus-wide workshops.
“I think they are trying to do a lot to protect students but they’re going about it the wrong way,” the student said. “It’s more about what the student can do to help themselves.”
He thinks students don’t think that it will happen to them.
“‘I’ll just be smarter,’ that’s what they’ll say, but when the crunch time comes they’re not,” he said.
“A lot of people think that it’s not connected to them.”
The student, admitting that he will probably have to walk home again, suggested that if other students are to walk home they “stay in groups and make it a point to not talk to anyone you don’t know.”
He said, though, that if he didn’t have a group of friends with him he wouldn’t have been walking there by himself and he wouldn’t have talked to the suspect.
“Be careful with the decisions that you make,” he said. “Don’t think that it won’t happen to you. It will.”
At the time of press there were still no leads on the suspect who is reported to be a black male between the ages of 18-20, around 5 feet 8 inches and 160 pounds. He was wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap and a New York Yankees jacket. If anyone has any information call the Tampa Police at (813) 276-3200 or Crime Stoppers toll-free at 1-800-873-8477.
Charlie Hambos can be reached at charlie.hambos@gmail.com.