Two Yale physics professors were held up at gunpoint by two suspects on Prospect Street near the Yale Divinity School late Tuesday night.
The professors left Sloane Physics Laboratory on Science Hill at about 11:30 p.m. and walked north towards the Divinity School where one of the two had parked his car, the other man said on condition of anonymity.
Near the intersection of Prospect Street and Hillside Place, as the professors were engrossed in conversation, two unidentified men came upon them from behind, possibly out of a hiding spot.
One man waved a gun in front of the professors and demanded money, while the other remained in the background. The first professor handed over his wallet but the second began to remove the cash from his own.
“I was not going to give him my wallet because I had important things in my wallet, like my identity papers,” said the second professor, who is not a U.S. citizen. “Then the other one put the gun to my head and said, ‘Give me everything.'”
Once they had both wallets, the suspects ran south on Prospect, escaping before the professors could flag down an approaching police cruiser.
The second professor said he lost his identification papers and green card, while both men lost licenses, credit cards and cash.
He added it was very hard to describe the men because that section of Prospect Street is very dark.
Police are investigating the incident. Both the Yale and New Haven police departments have stepped up patrols in the area, Yale Police Chief James Perrotti said.
“Our experience with robberies is that they’ve been down dramatically,” he said. “We’re really going to focus on this.”
One dies in shooting
One man died and another was injured in a shooting in the area of Maple and Norton streets Wednesday night, police said.
New Haven police responded to the scene at approximately 9:54 p.m. and found Jason Moody, 19, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the Hospital of St. Raphael shortly thereafter.
A second man, 23-year-old Jerald Johnson, was found about a block away on Edgewood Avenue, suffering from a non-life threatening gunshot wound. He was also treated at St. Raphael and subsequently released.
Witnesses said they saw a man in a red and blue jacket and several cars fleeing the scene, police told the New Haven Register Wednesday night.
The NHPD is pursuing leads in the investigation but had not made any arrests as of Thursday. Moody’s death was the city’s third homicide of the year.
Crazy teens
Yale police and a regional auto-theft task force are investigating the theft of a car from a Divinity School parking lot last weekend.
Police received reports of three broken car windows and a stolen vehicle on Monday. The stolen car was subsequently found on Lilac Street by the NHPD, missing its radio.
University police arrested three teenagers last February in connection with several auto thefts on Yale property and as many as 20 others in the area. The theft last weekend had a similar modus operandi.
“We’re looking into the possibility that it’s a similar group of juveniles that may be starting up again,” Perrotti said.