Crime & Safety

UC Student Describes Being Robbed as Bystander Stood By

A senior at the University of California at Berkeley writes in a Berkeleyside op-ed column about being mugged by unarmed assailants a block from her home and asks why a bystander two yards away didn't "step in or speak up."

A UC Berkeley senior who was mugged a block from her Berkeley home last week has described the attack in an op-ed column, which asks why a bystander two yards away didn't do more to intervene.

Adena Ishii was attacked by two females and then a male about 7:15 a.m. near her South Berkeley home and struggled with her assailants, she says in the column published on Berkeleyside.com.
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"I fought off my attackers and managed to save my cell phone, but my laptop and some money was stolen in the process," she wrote.

She also didn't understand the bystander's response, or lack thereof.

"What about that bystander though?" she wrote. "Why didn’t he step in or speak up? The assailants didn’t have weapons. ... It was only when the guy got out of their car and started to fight me for my phone that he sort of called out for him to stop. He was not more than two yards away when this happened."

You can read the entire column on Berkeleyside.com.

Berkeley has been plagued by a rash of street robberies this year.Police Chief Michael Meehan told Patch earlier this month that robberies in the city are registering a large increase over last year.

Other recent robberies of students and young people in Berkeley reported by Patch include:


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