Four college-age women have been robbed at the point of a screwdriver near campus in the past two weeks, prompting public safety officials to issue a warning to students.
The first such robbery occurred Nov. 9, officials say. DPS issued a crime alert about the cases yesterday, asking students to come forward with any information they have.
The Division of Public Safety will not say how many of the victims are Penn students. Under a new policy, DPS refuses to release victim's affiliations with the University.
But an e-mail written by a female Penn junior, in which she says she was approached by a man wielding a screwdriver, has circulated among Penn listservs. The e-mail indicated that the crime occurred at 41st and Pine streets.
Three of the incidents were reported within several blocks of 40th and Pine.
"I turned around him again to see him coming through the parked cars and coming at me with something in his right hand, I thought to be a knife," the student wrote. "He was probably 5 to 8 seconds away from grabbing" the student before she fled, she wrote.
Officials said these incidents are likely related to three other screwdriver robberies that have occurred in West Philadelphia lately.
DPS says it is responding to the crimes with extra precautions. In addition to placing more police in areas officials say are likely to be targeted, Penn Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush said the division has dispatched plainclothes officers in unmarked cars, and that a task force was formed today between DPS and the Philadelphia Police to address these incidents.
"It is very clear to us that this individual needs to get off the street and needs to get off the street now," Rush said.
Victims have described their attacker as a man in his late twenties to early thirties with a dark to medium complexion, who is between 5-foot-4 and 5-8 and between 140 and 150 pounds. They have also said that the man wears a black, thigh-length puffy jacket and drives a dark-colored four-door car, possibly a Buick or Oldsmobile.
College junior Billy Hanafee, who lives in an apartment building on the 4000 block Pine Street, said that on a recent night he heard what sounded like a woman breathing heavily and that police visited his building soon afterward.
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