Norfolk, Va. - Old Dominion University students are saying they should have been notified sooner following an attempted robbery on campus.
But campus police say they purposely waited for several hours to send out an alert.
“We need to know if someone is out robbing people and we’re walking around,” says one student.
ODU Police say three guys pinned a student to the ground and tried to steal his wallet while he was walking through a parking lot.
It happened around 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning.
One student told NewsChannel 3 that an alert didn’t go out until 8 hours later.
ODU’s police chief wasn’t sure exactly how long they waited, but says it was several hours. The reason, she says, is because the suspects weren’t armed and had already left the area.
“We actually had the car off campus. We knew the suspects were off the campus area,” says Police Chief Rhonda Harris.
Every situation is different. She says an alert goes out right away if they believe the community is in danger.
“It could be somebody who is armed on campus. It could be a potential bomb threat. It could be somebody who commits a violent offense somewhere else and we now believe has fled to the campus community,” she says.
