Two Armed Robberies in Two Days in Benign Brookline

Like a horror film in which menacing characters wreak havoc on an unassuming small town, Boston University students have become the victims of two armed robberies within two days in the otherwise tranquil Brookline. (Okay, so Brookline’s no Pleasantville, but check the image below, via crimereports.com, for a comparison of the reported crimes in Brookline and surrounding areas from the past two weeks.)

At 2:55 a.m. Sunday morning (read: at the point in the movie when things start to go wrong), two BU students were walking in the Thorndike Street and Hamilton Road area of Brookline when they were robbed by two males with a handgun, said BU and Brookline Police.

While an armed robbery itself is uncommon in a town like Brookline, where last September there was only one report of attempted robbery when a man tried and failed to grab a woman’s purse and run, we’re not that surprised, given the time of day the crime took place.

But adding to the mild rarity is the second attack, during which three men held three BU students at gunpoint at Egmont and St. Paul Street, a mere eight blocks away from the original robbery site, on Tuesday at the civil time of 5:00 p.m., according to a BUPD emergency alert email sent to students.

The email included descriptions of the second set of attackers, which sound suspiciously similar to those of the first—small groups of young, black males. BUPD Captain Robert Molloy told BU Today that the suspects were reported to be around the same ages (16-20) as the suspects who mugged the other BU students on Sunday, though he couldn’t confirm whether or not the two robberies were related.

In response to the pair of crimes, both BUPD and Brookline PD have increased marked and unmarked patrols in the area, the email said. Still, if we were in Brookline, we’d be on high alert for the next couple days (and also maybe avoid looking like BU students!).

Image: The flags represent various crimes, (see crimereports.com for a legend) and the red arrow shows the general area of this week’s robberies.