A Northwestern senior was robbed at gunpoint several blocks west of campus Saturday morning, marking the second such incident involving an NU student since September.
Medill senior Phil Stuart said he was walking home from a sorority-sponsored event at about 4:30 a.m. when a man on a bicycle rode up from behind him at the corner of Ridge Avenue and Emerson Street. The man put his arm around Stuart’s neck, choked him and put a gun to his back, Stuart told The Daily on Sunday.
“He said, ‘Give me all your money or I’ll kill you,'” Stuart said.
Stuart surrendered his wallet, which he said contained about $40 in cash, credit cards, his driver’s license and the magnetic key card to his nearby apartment building. The offender pedaled away westbound on Emerson Street.
“I was kind of paralyzed for a second,” Stuart said. “It had happened pretty quickly, and I wasn’t sure what to do.”
He said he called his roommate, who brought him inside to call the police. Stuart said he was “an emotional wreck.”
“I was pretty shaky most of the day yesterday, ” he said Sunday. “I kept replaying it in my mind.”
Stuart told police the offender was male, 30 to 35 years old, wearing an orange athletic-style short sleeve shirt and dark athletic-style pants, said Cmdr. Joseph Bellino of Evanston Police Department. Officers who searched the area after the incident could not locate an offender meeting that description, Bellino said.
On Sept. 15, one day after new students moved into campus, Weinberg senior David Deterding punched a man who demanded his wallet on Orrington Avenue, causing the offender to run away.
Stuart, who is the news director for Northwestern News Network, said he spends late hours at the television station and often walks home alone.
“Since I moved into that apartment in June I’ve been walking back without a problem,” he said. “Now, I guess I’ll think twice before going anywhere alone at night.”
Stuart said he had been similarly attacked in high school, but this was more frightening.
“This was worse because I was alone and because there was a gun involved,” he said. “You just think about the fact that you could have lost your life.”
NU officials posted a security alert detailing the event on Associated Student Government’s HereAndNow Web site Saturday morning. UP could not be reached for comment Sunday, but advised students to use shuttle buses and the Student Escort Service in the security alert.
The shuttle runs on and off campus every night until 3 a.m. Escort Service, which will give rides to parties of three or less, takes calls from 9 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. each night.
Stuart described the experience as surreal.
“I saw the security alert thing on the Web page and I thought, ‘Whoa, that’s me,'” he said. “It’s weird because you see these things happening so much and it doesn’t hit you how scary it can be until it happens to you.”
Reach Marissa Conrad at [email protected].
