Capt. Eric Grabski: Incident didn't pose an immediate threat to campus
At about 10:30 p.m. Thursday night, a 21-year-old USC student was robbed at gunpoint by a pair of suspects near the university's campus, according to the Columbia Police Department.
The robbery occurred on Pendleton Street near its intersection with Laurens Street, which is in a residential area about a block away from Capstone House and the Business Administration building.
The two suspects are between the ages of 25 and 30 and were driving a silver or other light-colored SUV, a crime alert posted by the USC Department of Law Enforcement and Safety said. Jennifer Timmons, he Columbia Police Department's public information officer, confirmed that the victim, a man, was a USC student Friday afternoon.
According to a police report, the suspects drove up to the victim, who was walking away from campus, and asked him, "Do you have change for $10?" When the man said he didn't, the suspect pulled out a grey handgun and told the victim to "give me your money." The victim responded that he had no money and gave the suspect his iPod, the report said.
The suspects then fled the scene and headed down Laurens Street in the direction of Greene Street, according to the report.
USC police knew of the incident immediately, according to Capt. Eric Grabski, as one of their officers was in the area.
USC's students and faculty, however, did not.
The department posted a crime alert to its website Friday morning; a tweet was sent shortly thereafter at 10:22 a.m. on the Carolina Alert Twitter account, nearly 12 hours after the incident occurred. The Carolina Alert's text message and email systems were not used.
According to Grabski, USC police opted not to use those systems because the department decided the incident didn't represent "an immediate threat" to campus. A USC PD officer saw the SUV headed away from campus, Grabski said.
"The threat left campus," he said. "It wasn't even on campus technically."
Those systems are only used when such a time-sensitive threat exists, Grabski said, so USC PD decided that an online crime alert was sufficient.
"When we have an incident that happens near campus, we like to keep our community informed as to what's going on so that they can take the necessary precautions," he said. "If we believe there's an immediate threat to the campus community, then we're going to notify campus immediately. If we don't, based upon what we see and what the incident is, we may then alert the community through a crime alert ... but we're not going to do it immediately."
Later in the day Friday afternoon, however, at about 4 p.m., the Carolina Alert system sent text messages and emails to students and faculty regarding recent armed robberies near campus. On Feb. 29, the system was used to notify the community about an armed robbery at the intersection of Wheat and Pickens streets.
"Several armed robberies in areas surrounding campus recently," the text message said. "Be aware and safe this weekend."
The system also sent an email that listed safety tips, including some pertaining to the weekend's St. Patrick's Day celebrations.
"The university obviously knows that St. Patty's Day weekend is a weekend where a large number of our community is out," Grabski said in an interview later in the afternoon. "Any time something happens, even when it's off campus, it concerns us, so we want to make sure our community is aware of how to stay safe and how to prevent themselves from becoming the victim of any crime, not just a robbery."
UPDATE (3/16 4:27 p.m.): Updated to reflect a text message and email sent to USC students and faculty Friday afternoon.
UPDATE 2 (3/16 4:59 p.m.): Recieved incident report from the Columbia Police Department.
UPDATE 3 (3/16 5:45 p.m.): Jennifer Timmons, of the Columbia Police Department, confirmed that the victim was a USC student.