Posted on 01/07/2005 6:09:34 PM PST by Coleus
I served time in Rutgers grad school.
>>as nearly all students are prevented from carrying weapons.<<
I knew two young women who carried small revolvers in their purses everywhere they went while at college. They also had holsters concealed within the fabric of their winter jackets.
Not one of their girlfriends, boy friends, professors or campus police ever suspected that these two girls were armed everywhere they went.
Kind of amazing what one can put inside a diabetes test kit pouch, isn't it?
it happened on Stone Street, between College Ave and Easton Ave. Not the most terrible neighborhood in the city by any means. What did you study at Rutgers?
For those who were wondering about the racial angle, pictures of all 4 perps have appeared in the local papers and all of them are black. The victims' races haven't been mentioned at all. I don't agree with hate crimes legislation, but if this was black-on-white then they ought to use the hate crimes statue out of fairness. Because heaven knows they'd use it if things were the other way around.
From the article about the teacher:
"I'll make you a promise that I won't tell anybody"Didn't work. He wanted her care, and he wanted her life
Amazing if it doesn't appear in the news people assume that there's no justice. If the victim was black would some on this thread still be so upset? I hate to see conservatives play the race card in this way.
I had to teach a summer class on Douglass campus and people don't believe me that it took 20 minutes (at least!) to drive from my office to my classroom.
What's your point?
That, unfortunately, seems to be the case. And all crime is a hate crime, for that matter.
Violence doesn't know race or sex, wealth or location.
I suppose it is the content of this thread's discussion. If it wasn't the focus of the article why is it the focus of people's comments in light of the fact no one is privy to any information about the victims?
Point is that many who posted on this thread seemed to be jumping to conclusions about race despite any lack of possible evidence besides an Afro.
Many newspapers do not put the pictures in print on their Internet links.
Uh, it's New Jersey, the area near Rutgers, and one of them had an afro. You think the guys were Norwegian?
Two female Rutgers University students were in a bathroom sharing cocaine with their roommates and other party guests when four masked men burst into their New Brunswick apartment, witnesses told a jury in Middlesex County yesterday. The intruders robbed the group, and the two women were among three who were sexually assaulted, they said.
The two women, age 23 and 25, were unable to identify their assailants but offered details of the attack at their off-campus apartment on Stone Street in the early morning hours of March 8. The 23-year-old woman also told the jury that after one of her assailants took her to a bedroom and attacked her, "he actually called one of his friends into the room and he said, 'Oh, try this.'"
"Meaning you?" First Assistant Middlesex County Prosecutor William Lamb asked the student. "Yes," the woman replied, adding the second man "tried having intercourse with me."
The testimony came in the second day of the trial of Timothy Heard, a 19-year-old New Brunswick man who is the only one of four defendants to go to trial. Three others pleaded guilty and are facing prison terms ranging up to 20 years.
Lamb contends it was Heard who raped the 23-year-old woman, and then called co-defendant, Jalonn Lassiter, 25, of New Brunswick, to join the attack after Lassiter assaulted the 25-year-old student in a separate bedroom.
Heard, accused of 19 counts including charges of aggravated sexual assault, kidnapping by holding the students against their will, robbery and burglary, could be sentenced to life in prison if he is convicted.
Heard watched each witness and did not look away, even when two New Brunswick police officers pointed to him in court. The officers said they identified him among the four men whose images were captured on a video surveillance camera shortly after the early- morning attack.
Heard's lawyer, Robert Corbin, said his client, who moved to New Brunswick from Auburn, N.Y., a little more than a year ago to live with a sister, was not involved.
During Corbin's cross-examination of the 23-year-old woman, she said she couldn't recall any of the assailants wearing white sweat pants and a hooded pullover, and had never mentioned the white outfit while giving police a description of the assailants.
In the videotape surveillance of the four men, shown yesterday to the jury, the man identified as Heard was wearing a dark jacket over the white outfit.
The prosecuting attorney also contends another defendant, Kyle Parker-Hall, a 20-year-old visiting from Laurel, Md., forced another female student to perform oral sex on him, while the other party guests were forced to lie facedown on the living room floor with a gun pointed to the backs of their heads.
The fourth man accused in the attack, Raymond Dargan, 20, of New Brunswick, is serving nine years in prison after telling authorities he served as the lookout.
Key testimony yesterday came from the two witnesses, who recounted their ordeals and offered similar accounts of the robbery, saying a number of men brandished weapons, rounded up the seven party guests and took cash, cell phones and other items before forcing them into a dark closet, ransacking the place and fleeing.
The men demanded money and marijuana, screaming, "Where's the weed?" as they tore through the three-bedroom apartment, the witnesses said.
During the rampage, the 25-year-old woman said she was forced into one of the bedrooms, where he demanded money.
"I told him we didn't have any money," the woman said. "Then he told me to take off my pants."
The man, identified by authorities as Lassiter, forced her to perform oral sex on him and raped her, she said. "After that, he made me perform oral sex again, and then he told me to put my pants back on," she said.
On cross-examination, the woman said most of the apartment guests, who were among people celebrating a friend's 21st birthday, were sharing cocaine in the bathroom when the masked men stormed the first-floor apartment and robbed the five women and two men.
The other witness, the 23-year-old student, told the jury she was among people lying facedown in the living room when one of the men, identified by authorities as Heard, "asked if I was Chinese," the woman said, pausing for a moment to fight back tears before continuing.
"I said, 'Well, yeah, I am.' He said, I always wanted to be with a Chinese girl,' and he led me off" into a bedroom.
She said the man pulled off her pants, "was trying to have sex with me," and began verbally abusing her. After five or 10 minutes, he called in his friend to continue the assault, she said in a voice barely above a whisper.
After the attack, she, along with the others, was forced into the closet, she said, adding that before police arrived, she fled to her boyfriend's home and took a shower, but later reported to the county's Rape Crisis Center in Edison for an exam.
The trial before Superior Court Judge Frederick DeVesa is scheduled to resume Monday.
Cocaine party. That's why people send their kids to Rutgers. To learn about life, the liberal way.
Well, these poor girls learned all right--the hard way.
No young women should be sent off to a liberal college nowadays without a gun, and the knowledge of how to use it.
Better to be charged with unlawful conceal and carry than to lose your life, or to be subjected to brutal sexual violence.
A group of young people, most of them Rutgers University students, had such a good time at a New Brunswick bar celebrating their friend's 21st birthday one night last March that they carried the party over to an off-campus apartment.
A few people went in and out of the apartment, and, according to police, somebody left a door unlocked. It was a mistake that turned a night of celebration into a night of terror.
Suddenly, three young men, their faces covered with masks, burst into the ground-floor apartment on Stone Street brandishing a gun and box cutters. A fourth man said later he stood guard outside.
Before fleeing with cash, credit cards, cell phones and other items, the men sexually assaulted three Rutgers women, 19, 20 and 25, according to police and a Middlesex County grand jury.
Details of the March 8 home invasion, which stunned the Rutgers community and neighbors living in the quiet neighborhood, will begin to emerge this week when a trial gets under way at the Middlesex County Courthouse for Timothy Heard, a 19-year-old New Brunswick man who is accused of being one of the assailants.
Since the attack, three of the accused have pleaded guilty and will serve various prison terms ranging up to 20 years. They also are among witnesses scheduled to testify against Heard.
The stakes are high for Heard, who insists he was not involved. In September, he rejected an offer in which he could have pleaded guilty and spent the next 11 to 14 years in prison.
When Heard insisted on going to trial, Superior Court Judge Frederick DeVesa warned him that if convicted of burglary, armed robbery, kidnapping, weapons offenses, aggravated sexual assault and conspiring to commit the crimes, he could be sentenced to multiple prison terms that would be the equivalent of life in prison with no chance for parole.
Heard's lawyer, Robert Corbin, a former prosecuting attorney who practices law in Trenton, said Heard wants to be cleared of the crime.
"He didn't do it," Corbin said. "There's no indication of any physical evidence that would link Timothy Heard to these offenses."
First Assistant Middlesex County Prosecutor William Lamb, who will present evidence and testimony against Heard, declined to comment. In earlier, pre-trial hearings, Heard's three co-defendants, in acknowledging their guilt, provided an outline of the case.
Authorities contend the ringleader of the group, Jalonn Lassiter, 25, of New Brunswick, Heard, and two others, Raymond Dargan, 20, of New Brunswick and Kyle Parker-Hall, 20, who was visiting from Laurel, Md., decided to rob the party-goers.
Dargan later said the group was on the prowl for drugs and said he stood guard while the three others robbed the group of five women and two men. One of the men, authorities charged, was punched in the face when he apparently tried to use his cell phone.
During the attack, which lasted 15 to 30 minutes, Lassiter raped one of the women, after forcing her into oral sex, the grand jury charged. Lassiter and Heard each raped the second woman, while Parker-Hall forced the third woman into oral sex, the grand jury charged.
An eighth person in the apartment was not accosted, police said, noting she slept in a bedroom through the entire incident.
The defendants who pleaded guilty told the court during separate hearings that they fled with a variety of items. One said he took $1 from one of the victims and another defendant said he took a laptop computer worth $1,000. Cell phones and credit cards also were taken. Police said there were no drugs in the apartment.
Police rounded up Dargan and Heard about a week after the attack, and Parker-Hall, who returned to Maryland, surrendered to police there. Lassiter was apprehended nearly two months later after an off-duty police officer recognized him at a bar in Mercer County, authorities said.
In addition to the Stone Street attack, Lassiter was accused of other robberies in New Brunswick and has pleaded guilty in those cases. He did not admit to the sex assault charges. He also is awaiting a trial in Union County on charges of fatally shooting a used car salesman March 13 in Elizabeth after attempting to rob him of cocaine.
At one of the hearings on the Stone Street attack, Lamb told Judge DeVesa that police recovered DNA evidence that linked Lassiter and Parker-Hall to the assaults.
While there is no DNA evidence that incriminates Heard, his co-defendants identify him as an accomplice, according to court records.
Judge DeVesa has set aside two weeks for the trial.
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