Two female graduate students were robbed on Saturday at approximately 2 a.m., according to a public safety announcement issued by the Department of Public Safety on Sunday.

According to the report, the two students were walking east on O Street from Wisconsin Avenue when a heavily built black male, approximately 5-foot-10 and possibly wearing a dark skull cap, approached them from behind and unsuccessfully tried to take one student’s purse, knocking her to the ground.

DPS reported that the suspect then turned to the second student and struck her across the face. He took her purse and ran towards 31st Street, jumping into the back of a black Ford F-150 pickup truck.

The report described the truck’s driver as an Hispanic or a light-complexioned black male.

This reported robbery follows another public safety announcement issued by DPS on Saturday at the request of the Metropolitan Police Department, detailing two similar robberies over the past three days in the Second District, which includes Georgetown. The MPD bulletin noted that neither robbery took place on or near campus, nor did either robbery involve members of the Georgetown community.

However, Acting Commander Matthew Klein of the MPD Second District confirmed yesterday that the 2 a.m. robbery involving the graduate students was one of the two they reported in Saturday’s PSA.

According to university spokesperson Julie Bataille, the DPS PSA was sent out before any connection could be made between the two robberies reported by the MPD and the robbery of the two graduate students.

“My understanding is that [Georgetown University] got the request from MPD to issue the advisory before we had gotten information about the other incident and prior to MPD confirming any connection to incidents involving members of the campus community,” Bataille said in an e-mail. “In an effort to inform the community of these incidents as soon as possible we issued the PSA to provide a community alert to these crimes. Earlier today MPD confirmed the incident we issued our PSA about was related to one of those in the earlier advisory.”

This MPD report described another similar robbery that occurred on Saturday at 2:07 p.m. on the 2900 block of 45th Street in which a male suspect of the same description grabbed a female’s purse and boarded a black Ford pick-up truck, which, according to the report, may have been an F-150. The report further stated that the truck had tinted windows and may have had spinners on the wheels. The driver was similarly described as a 30- to 40-year-old Hispanic or black male with a light complexion, between five-feet-nine and five-feet-ten inches tall.

According to Klein, this e-mail was sent out to Georgetown students to advise them to watch for any suspicious activity in the area, including signs of the two suspects.

“In this case, we developed information that the two suspects we were seeking were probably responsible for a rash of robberies in the Georgetown area. We sent the information to Georgetown [University] so that they could disseminate to Georgetown public safety as well as the students, both as a warning and to obtain more `eyes’ in the Georgetown area,” Klein said in an e-mail to THE HOYA.

Klein reported Sunday afternoon in an update to the DPS public safety announcement issued Saturday that two suspects were arrested on Saturday night in connection with a series of robberies in the Second District. These robberies, he said, were characterized by a victim’s being knocked to the ground and the suspect’s stealing the victim’s purse or another item.

“I am happy to report that last night, we arrested two subjects that we strongly believe were responsible for the vast majority of those violent cases,” Klein said in the e-mail.

The arrests came as a result of greater police presence in the area, according to Klein. He said that the suspects were noticed in the Third District acting suspiciously. They matched the descriptions of the two suspects in local robberies and were arrested.

Klein added that though the MPD is still working to determine whether or not the arrested suspects were involved in the robbery of the two graduate students, the MPD said that they believe they are.

– Masako Chen contributed to this report.

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