Monday evening at 9:35, Safety and Security were notified that an armed robbery had taken place at Gardens East apartments between 8:53 and 8:58 p.m.
The individuals who contacted security were not first-hand witnesses to the incident or actual victims of the crime.
Security responded to the scene at 9:40 p.m. to determine the veracity of the report, said Gary Segrue, the director of security.
“Safety and Security and law enforcement were unable to immediately locate the actual involved victims,” said Segrue. “This was considered suspicious because usually a victim of an armed robbery desires immediate assistance from authorities and remains to provide detailed information. For some reason, this did not occur.”
Students involved in the situation reported the perpetrators to be be three young men. No one was injured.
Trying to secure information from the students involved was more time-consuming than anticipated. Once security determined the report to be legitimate, officers contacted the Cattaraugus County 911 Center at 9:44 p.m., who dispatched regional police agencies to the scene, Segrue said.
The Cattaraugus County Sheriff’s Department, New York State Police, Allegany Police and Olean City Police also responded to the scene.
The university’s Emergency Management plan was then initiated. The president and key administrators were contacted, and a shelter-in-place directive was issued via text alert just after 10:20 p.m., Segrue said.
At 10:27 p.m. students, parents, faculty and staff who had signed up for the e2campus text alert system received a message headlining “Suspicious Incident – Shelter in Place.” The message detailed where the incident took place and law enforcement was on the scene. There was no message telling the campus community that an armed robbery had been reported until the next day.
“Shelter-in-place is a serious directive and we felt it was appropriate in this incident,” said Segrue. “In the case of a confirmed active random shooter, we would certainly have made that fact clear and issued lockdown/run-hide-fight alerts for the immediately affected areas and lockout in place for others.”
The shelter-in-place was lifted on Tuesday at 12:42 a.m.
At 10:28 a.m. on Tuesday, an email was sent out to the campus community giving details of the incident and how it was handled.
Segrue was responsible for the text alerts and the follow-up email.
On main campus, resident assistants and resident directors were aware of the situation.
“I was told by the RDs to tell my residents to shelter, which was to stay in their room and wait for further notice,” said Bobby Nguyen, a junior cyber security major and RA. “All RAs have a group chat and each team has a separate group chat. So, Dev RAs were notified via group chat. Earlier to this, I also made a call to the RD on duty to ask about the situation.”
The investigation is ongoing, with the CCSD as the lead investigating agency.
Several university administrators have the capability to send emergency texts. Typically, it’s one of two people who send administer the text: Segrue or Thomas Missel, the interim vice president for university relations.
“To me, I think there must have been a legit reason to explain the delay of information to the school and its students,” said Nguyen. “But yes, it should have been much faster and more thorough in terms of details in the announcement.”
The sheriff’s department do have a list of suspects, said a Cattaraugus County Sheriff’s Office spokesman.
The university can’t say much more than this, due to the possible compromisation of the investigation, said a university spokesperson.
The general student population was not in danger, said the spokesman.
The sheriff’s office had quite a bit of cooperation from the university and people around the university, with everyone working together, said the spokesman.
The perpetrators have not yet been apprehended.
By Amber Canbek, News Editor
canbekam16@bonaventure.edu
