By Janelle MacDonald - bio | email

LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) - A crime alert on the University of Louisville campus just as students head back to class. WAVE 3 is working for U of L students and their parents to find out what happened in this armed robbery and what police are doing about it.

The first days of college are as much about learning to navigate life as they are about navigating around campus.

"Mom and dad's not there to help you anymore," says freshman Macey Rice.

So she says when she heard about an armed robbery at Stansbury Park near campus, it really opened her eyes.

"I think it's kind of scary to know because I know they were freshmen too so to know that you can just nonchalantly go somewhere and be held at gunpoint is really scary for me," Rice said.

Police say two robbers walked up to a group of students late Thursday night, one of them flashed a gun, and then the pair robbed them.

"They approached four students," said University Police Lieutenant Colonel Kenny Brown. "They weren't in a group together, but they were very close to each other and the suspects demanded their personal effects, cell phones, I think wallet, what have you."

Brown says the robbers were either really bold or really lucky because a special patrol of Louisville Metro Police and U of L police officers who were working the outskirts of campus had just left the park ten minutes earlier.

"Unfortunately I guess we can't be every place at all times," Brown said. "You know, I don't know whether these people were just extra bold or just didn't see the police and just kind of blundered in but needless to say, we took that kind of personally."

Rice took it kind of personally too.

"I live right there so it literally happened right next door to us," she said.

She says it's a good reminder for freshmen just learning the campus ways: "Don't go into the park at night, stuff like your parents teach you. It's something you kind of forget about when you're in college, when you're on your own."

Brown says they do have a person of interest, although he's not naming him.

The descriptions of the two robbers are vague. Both are 18 to 19 years old. One of them has two defining features: gold front teeth and tattoos of flames on his stomach area.

Brown says that special patrol -- the partnership between campus police and LMPD -- has nabbed 17 arrests. One of those was a man wanted in several states for sex crimes. Another was a man wanted on four charges of armed robbery.

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