A 21-year-old male Brown student was robbed at gunpoint as he walked alone on Williams Street between Brook and Thayer streets at around 9:30 p.m. Saturday.
Michael Smallberg '06 told The Herald he was walking home from Steinert Practice Center when two young, light-skinned black males approached him from behind. One of the men pointed a black handgun at him and demanded his wallet, Smallberg said.
The two men on foot were accompanied by two white females in an older model white four-door vehicle parked nearby, according to a Providence Police Department report.
Smallberg, who was not carrying his wallet at the time, gave the men his cell phone instead, and was told to run away. He turned around moments later and saw that the two men and the car were gone. Smallberg called the Department of Public Safety using a blue light emergency phone near the parking garage on Power Street, and officers from both DPS and PPD arrived shortly thereafter. Smallberg later filed an official report at the downtown PPD station.
He was not injured during the incident.
As of Sunday night, PPD was still searching for the suspects, according to Detective Brendan McGrath. Smallberg described the two males as around 19 to 25 years old, both approximately 5'9" and weighing 180 lbs.
Smallberg said he did not give the men his house keys, contradicting a report published in the Providence Journal Sunday. He accidentally dropped his keys during the robbery but found them on the sidewalk later that night, he said.
"Neither of them ever laid a hand on me. At no point did I think they were actually going to use the gun," he said. "So in the end I was uninjured and only lost a cell phone - a lucky turn of events as far as I'm concerned."
The crime alert e-mailed to the Brown community Sunday was the first issued since the beginning of the school year, but DPS received four reports of assault and two reports of robbery between Sept. 1 and Oct. 14, according to statistics compiled by Michelle Nuey, manager of special services at DPS. Due to the loss of a DPS staff member, crime reports are no longer posted on the department's Web site, Nuey said.
"Alerts are not sent out (by DPS) for every individual crime," said Mark Nickel, director of the Brown News Service. "There are criteria. Mostly, it's a question of whether there is a continuing threat to people in the community."
