Three people targeted, two of them Temple University students, in armed robberies near campus this week
Two individuals were robbed by men with a handgun overnight Thursday. A similar incident happened early on Wednesday near the university's North Philadelphia campus.
A Temple student and another individual not associated with the university were robbed by armed suspects near the school’s North Philadelphia campus early Thursday morning, according to university officials.
Around 1:30 a.m., the Temple student was walking near the 1500 block of Oxford Street when two men approached with a handgun and stole the student’s phone, Jennifer Griffin, Temple’s vice president for public safety and chief of police, said in a statement.
The men ran off and fired one shot in the air as they fled.
Minutes earlier, in a separate incident located several blocks away, those men robbed another individual, stealing that person’s phone, near the 1300 block of Carlisle Street.
The robberies were the second instance of phone theft near Temple’s campus this week.
Around 6:15 a.m. on Wednesday, a man with a handgun approached a Temple student walking on the 1800 block of West Montgomery Avenue and stole that person’s phone, Griffin said in an earlier statement.
The suspect immediately fled north on 18th Street. No arrests have been made in either incident.
On Thursday, Griffin announced that Temple and Philadelphia police would be coordinating a concentrated presence in the area as both departments investigate the robberies.
“Incidents like this are deeply troubling,” Griffin said.
Later in the day, Temple’s Public Safety department released an image of two suspects wanted in connection to Thursday’s robberies, urging anyone who recognized them to contact Investigations@temple.edu or call 215-204-6200.
Griffin also highlighted that students who were impacted by the incidents may use the campus’s walking escort program, its nighttime fixed-route shuttle service, and the school’s personal safety app.