UMD Crime Reported Too Late

On August 13, a man drove up to a female student around 9:30 p.m. as she was walking through Lot1B, a parking lot by the Tawes Fine Arts building. The man instructed the student to get into the vehicle. The student continued to walk and the man parked his car and grabbed her. The student was able to break free and escape.

The student decided not to report the crime until 14 hours after the incident had taken place. At the University of Maryland, there is a text messaging alert system in place to notify students of events that could be potentially threatening to them. Since the student waited so long to report the incident, UMD students were not notified that anything had happened.

I am a member of the SpotCrime team and also a student at UMD. This incident is unsettling to me. I am not currently on campus but I have friends that are and they would have taken this alert very seriously. Lot 1 is very close to a lot of student housing along a main road that the man could have easily driven down. I subscribe to the text message alert system and we only receive alerts when serious incidents take place and this is one that everyone should have been made aware of as soon as it happened.


To see this crime, go to http://www.ucrime.com/crime/1740687-19001624c51568eb7f72b11b4b785b29. To see the story from the Diamondback, go to http://media.www.diamondbackonline.com/media/storage/paper873/news/2008/08/21/News/Crime.Reported.Too.Late.To.Send.Text.Alert.Police.Say-3400781.shtml