Philadelphia and Temple police made two arrests this week in incidents involving student victims that occurred near Main Campus this month, including the shooting near the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity on Nov. 8.
Executive Director of Campus Safety Services Charlie Leone said Temple Police brought the suspect from the shooting into custody around 12:01 a.m. Thursday before handing him over to Philadelphia police.
In that incident, police said that a male suspect shot a 22-year-old student in the left hip after he was denied access to a party on the property in the 1500 block of North 17th Street around 1 a.m. The student was taken to Hahnemann University Hospital with non-life threatening injuries and was later released.
Leone said city police will release the suspect’s name along with the charges against him in the next few hours.
“Our officers made the stop on [the suspect],” Leone said. “He went down to [Philadelphia central headquarters] … they interviewed him and then the charges were filed against him.”
Another arrest was made on Wednesday night, when a female student was approached by a male outside her home on the 2100 block of North 18th Street.
Leone said the man demanded the student’s phone, and “gestured as if to have a gun in his pocket.” The student did not relinquish her property and began banging on her front door before the suspect fled the area.
Around 15 to 20 minutes later, Leone said Temple Police’s “plain clothes” team saw the suspect and another individual on the corner of Diamond and Carlisle streets. The female student identified the suspect as the male who had just tried to rob her.
Two TU Alerts were sent out about those incidents.
Leone said the student recognized the individual from being around the area.
“She said to the officers when they first put her in the car, ‘I’ve seen that guy before, I think he’s from the neighborhood, I’ve seen him before,’” Leone said.
Leone said the officers didn’t charge the individual right away since the suspect didn’t have the female’s phone or any of her other belongings. The suspect was released after initial questioning and an arrest.
Temple Police will review video footage from a private property in the area before confirming and possibly re-arresting the individual, Leone said.
Further developments have also been made in a Nov. 14 robbery involving two males on the 1400 block of North Carlisle Street. Philadelphia police have released a video and a still image of the two suspects, who allegedly stole a student’s cell phone and then fled south on 15th Street.
Leone said Temple is looking into connections between this robbery and one that occurred on Nov. 12 near the corner of 15th and Jefferson streets, due to similar physical descriptions of the suspects and the crimes happening only a block apart.
Leone added that private video footage in that area has shown individuals that look like those in the Philadelphia police release this morning, and believes they live near the southern end of Main Campus.
Although there has been an increase of TU Alerts during this week, Leone said reportable crime has actually been down from this point last year.
Leone added that because Temple’s patrol zone has increased, more TU Alerts have been issued as a result of this larger geographic footprint.
“One of the things we’ve promised students is that we’re going to look further out when doing alerts,” Leone said. “So a year ago, some of these things may not have gotten an alert because it’s two, three, four blocks from campus.”
Steve Bohnel can be reached at steven.bohnel@temple.edu or on Twitter @Steve_Bohnel.
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