On Friday morning, Temple University students were robbed after being made to go into a basement at an off-campus residence in Philadelphia.
According to Philadelphia police, the students were robbed at around six in the morning when two men with masks and hooded sweatshirts came into the house, carrying at least one gun. Eleven young people were in the house asleep, and ranged from males and females between the ages of 20 to 22. The thieves put the students into the basement and then took their cellphones, credit cards, and a car. They also took money and destroyed a television.
🚨GUNPOINT HOME INVASION at 1330 N 15th Street.
Police sources tell us that 11 TEMPLE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS were tied up at gunpoint and held hostage in the basement for over an hour.
Taken was multiple items from the house including a Lincoln MKZ
— PhillyCrimeUpdate (@PhillyCrimeUpd) November 11, 2022
“Overall is was just a violating experience,” one of the victims said while talking to the press.
“I don’t know how I’m going to be able to sleep here again,” another woman added.
Some of the female victims said that the armed men woke some of them up and then made them get the others out of bed. The women also said that the men asked them where drugs were, but there weren’t any.
“We were all just woken up. There was a guy with a gun. He came into a couple of our rooms. He made one of us go and wake up the rest of the roommates with the guy with the gun,” a student said.
They also said the robbers forced them to take out their phones, get rid of their passwords and sign out of their iCloud accounts. After they were put in the basement, the women got on their laptop computers to tell people to call the police.
“The most important thing is that no students were hurt or injured during this incident, which will continue to be investigated by the Philadelphia Police Department,” Temple said in a statement to NBC10. “The safety of the Temple community remains the university’s top priority.”
Temple University spokeswoman Deirdre Childress Hopkins told CNN that Temple University had started a service this week to assist students in “find[ing] off-campus housing that meets certain safety and security criteria.”
The women also stated they had heard about a similar situation recently happening to other students.
“I think the sad part is, we all talked in the room, we all realized once they came into the room, everyone was kind of like ‘oh, it’s our time now,’” one student said.
“You go to college, and it’s supposed to be a fun time when you can have fun with your friends and finally be away from home and have independence,” Nina, a senior, said. “Not only to have someone invade your home and your privacy, but to be woken up out of sleep … that kind of taints things.”
Police were continuing their search for the suspects who took the 2015 silver Lincoln MKZ with a Pennsylvania license plate of KMF-1560.