SU student robbed near Shaw Hall
A Syracuse University student was robbed and pepper sprayed Saturday at 2:45 a.m. on the 100 block of Euclid Avenue, said Sgt. Tom Connellan of the Syracuse Police Department. Police detained two suspects almost immediately after the incident.
Saturday’s incident marks the sixth on- or near-campus robbery in five weeks. The robbery is not connected to any of the others, Connellan said.
At the intersection of Comstock and Euclid avenues, Christopher Pribilski, a sophomore in the School of Information Studies, was text messaging on his cell phone when a woman came up and snatched his iPhone from him and began to walk away, Connellan said.
Pribilski turned to go after the woman and four males appeared. One of them sprayed Pribilski in the face with pepper spray and the group ran away with his phone. Pribilski ran down the street and notified a nearby Department of Public Safety officer of the incident, who then called SPD.
DPS and SPD set up a perimeter in the area. Moments later, someone witnessed the five suspects board an East Campus bus and notified the officers. Before the bus took off down Euclid Avenue, officers boarded the bus and arrested the suspects.
Sabrina Washington, 20, and David Herndon, 17, both of Syracuse, were arrested and charged with second-degree robbery. The other three in the group were not arrested as they didn’t take anything from the student or attack him.
Washington and Herndon are being held in the Onondaga County Justice Center on $20,000 bail, according to Justice Center records. Police confiscated the pepper spray canister and have the victim’s phone as evidence.
The Oct. 11 robbery is the semester’s first known robbery of an undergraduate student.
The only other passenger on the bus at the time of the arrests was Anand Ramakrishnan, an SU graduate student in computer engineering. He witnessed the group of five board the bus and ask to go downtown, he said.
The driver offered to take the group to the intersection of University Avenue and East Genesee Street so they could walk or take a taxi downtown. The group took money out of their pockets to pay the driver, but the driver refused, as it was a free bus.
As the bus began to drive away, Ramakrishnan said 10 to 12 DPS and SPD cars surrounded the bus. Three officers boarded and handcuffed the group, he said.
As it stands, police have arrested two other men, Nathaniel Flagg, 17, and Glen Hicks, 19, with the Sept. 7 gunpoint robbery of a State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry student.
Police are continuing to investigate the previous robberies.
Published on October 16, 2009 at 12:00 pm
