Chesterfield County police developed the information that led to the arrests of the last two Egyptian exchange students who failed to show up for their college program in Montana.
Mohamed Saleh Ahmed Maray, 20, and Mohamed Ibrahim Fouaad El Shenawy, 17, were arrested without incident Sunday afternoon in the Forest Ridge Apartment complex off Forest Hill Avenue in South Richmond, said Chesterfield police Capt. Karl Leonard.
The apartment complex is across Forest Hill Avenue from the Stratford Hills Shopping Center.
"They were just sitting outside," Leonard said. "I don't know how long they had been in the area, or what they were doing in the area. But that's where we found them."
The men were the last of 11 Egyptian exchange students to be apprehended. The students were to attend a monthslong program at Montana State University in Bozeman. A group of 17 students had arrived in New York on July 29. Six reported to Bozeman on time.
After Montana State repeatedly tried to contact the missing students, it notified federal Homeland Security officials and registered the Egyptians as no-shows in a system to track foreign students developed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
None of the students is considered a terrorism risk.
Leonard said Chesterfield police received information on Saturday that the last two missing students were believed to have been seen walking on Midlothian Turnpike (U.S. 60).
Police distributed pictures and information about the students to street officers, who contacted merchants along Route 60, "trying to see if anybody had seen them," Leonard said.
Then, about 2:30 p.m. Sunday, police received a call that gave investigators "a pretty good indication that the people [the caller] saw were in fact these students."
Police began to canvass areas where investigators thought they might be, Leonard said.
Officers then went to the South Richmond apartment complex and spotted the students outside. Chesterfield summoned Richmond police, and the students were taken into custody without incident.
Chesterfield authorities turned them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Last Wednesday, one of the 11 Egyptian students was arrested in Minneapolis and two were detained in Manville, N.J. On Thursday, two were arrested in Dundalk, Md., and one was arrested at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Three more were arrested Friday in Des Moines, Iowa.
" ... police received a call that gave investigators "a pretty good indication that the people [the caller] saw were in fact these students." ..."
*Hello, tipline? There are some swarthy-complected people milling around outside my apartment complex and one of them looks like Tony Soprano's son ...*
I read they had rented an apartment. They were getting pretty comfortable, wouldn't you say?