As two Chinese graduate students new to the country, Ke Xu and Li Kan stuck together during orientation, even getting on the same Verizon family plan when buying cell phones. Two months later—in separate incidents but on consecutive days—both were robbed on or near LaSalle Street.
The two met over lunch on the first day of school through a mutual friend—Kan’s roommate at Duke had been a classmate of Xu’s during her undergraduate years at Peking University in Beijing, China.
A few weeks later on the morning of Oct. 13, Xu, a first-year master’s student in computer science, was robbed at gunpoint on her way to campus by a black female in a gray hoodie. Kan, a first year graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in structural biology, was on his way to a party the night of Oct. 14 before being attacked by a black male in his 20s.
“We are close friends,” Xu said. “You know, I [was] shocked when he got robbed just one day after me.”
Robbed at gunpoint
Xu was nearing West Campus the morning she was robbed when a black woman approached her and asked to use her phone. It was 9 a.m. and Xu said she felt safe.
“It’s daylight—that wouldn’t happen at that time of the day,” Xu said she remembered thinking.
She obliged, then waited. In retrospect, Xu said she suspects that her attacker was not actually making a call; instead she was likely waiting for the perfect moment to rob Xu when no witnesses were in sight.
An instant later, the woman threw Xu to the ground, held her at gunpoint and told her to stay face down.
“She pushed me hard into the trees,” Xu said. “She took out a gun and pointed it out to me and said, ‘Give me your bag and give me everything in your pocket.’ I did everything she said.”
Her attacker then fled in a gray car with Xu’s backpack, which contained an mp3 player, a debit card and $30 in cash.
“I was a little bit scared when I was pointed [at] by a gun, so I just did what she wanted me to do,” Xu said.
Xu did not sustain any lasting injuries, but she said the robbery was emotionally traumatizing.
“Probably a gun”
Texting with one hand and holding a bottle of wine in the other, Kan was walking down LaSalle Street at about 10 p.m. on his way to a party when he spotted a black, hooded man standing at a bus stop in front of him.
Although he said he was wary of the darkness, Kan thought there was no way he would be robbed the day after his friend had been held up on the same street. As Kan walked by the bus stop, the hooded man suddenly grabbed the short 22-year-old, put him in a choke hold and pressed a metal object against his cheek.
“It felt cold,” Kan said, adding that because it was dark he could not fully see the object. “It was probably a gun.”
Kan said he struggled with his assailant and considered striking him with the bottle of wine, but he worried that he might get shot. After the brief struggle—Kan said he was familiar with basic self-defense maneuvers—the robber stripped Kan of his phone and threw it aside before striking him in the face with the metal object.
The attacker, who Kan described as dark-skinned and of medium height, then grabbed the phone from the ground and sprinted off. With his wallet still in his pocket, Kan made his way to the party where he called the police.
Administrative response
Chief John Dailey of the Duke University Police Department said that in the original report filed by DUPD Xu did not indicate that a firearm was involved in the crime. Indeed, an e-mail sent Wednesday night to the student body by Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta noted that there was “no weapon used.”
But according to both the Durham Police Department report and Xu’s personal account of the incident, she was robbed at gunpoint. Dailey said he was surprised to hear Xu had said with such certainty that her attacker had a handgun, and he noted that sometimes victims are able to recall crimes with increasing detail as time passes.
Dailey added that because the robberies took place off campus, DPD is the “primary investigative agency.”
In addition to the two incidents near LaSalle Street, another Duke student was the victim of an attempted robbery near Jarvis Dormitory Oct. 9. The victim’s identity was withheld by DUPD in its incident report. Dailey said that is standard operating procedure whenever DUPD feels that revealing the identity of a victim could compromise a student’s safety.
DUPD held a meeting Friday with DPD and a number of Duke officials to discuss student safety. DPD agreed to increase patrols on and around LaSalle Street and is assessing the area’s lighting to potentially increase visibility.
Both Xu and Kan said a number of Duke administrators, including staff from the International House, reached out to them after they were robbed. The International House will host a session Wednesday about safety for international students, International House Director Li-Chen Chin wrote in an e-mail.
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