I was a little puzzled, because it sounded as if she had seen them leaving this time (in August). However, the story was a little jumbled, so anything is possible. It looks like the reporter - who actually DID get out and do some investigation, unlike reporters for major papers - probably had to edit out a lot of it hastily for publication and there were some dangling threads left.
I’m sure we’re going to find they were connected to all sorts of things. Well, we in the general public may never find out about it, but the FBI and others probably will.
I think they’ve got to go back and take another good look at USF and its students.