Home Invader Hits UIC Student's Apartment
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Police are on the lookout Tuesday morning after a University of Illinois at Chicago student was the victim of a home invasion and robbery.
The incident happened over the weekend The student, who lived off campus in the 1100 block of West Taylor Street, told police that an intruder broke into the home about 4:45 a.m. Saturday and shined a flashlight in his face.
The suspect searched the student's pockets and took an ATM card and identification before demanding his PIN number, a UIC crime alert said. The suspect also took an electronic game system before fleeing the apartment.
Police think the suspect -- described as a 30- to 40-year-old African-American man, standing 5 feet 6 inches tall and 150 pounds with black hair and brown eyes -- entered and left the apartment through an unlocked rear door, according to the alert.
The student was not injured, according to the alert, which urges students to comply with potentially violent offenders intent on stealing property or valuables, as the student did.
Police are also telling students to lock doors and windows and refrain from letting unknown people into their buildings or yards, the alert said.
The block where the student lived is primarily residential, but is in the middle of the busy Taylor Street Little Italy district.
The incident comes in the wake of two other widely-reported attacks in which UIC students were the victims.
Just after midnight on June 5, a UIC student was attacked and robbed while riding a No. 12 Chicago Transit Authority bus on Roosevelt Road at Throop Street. A group of teens got on the bus, and one suspect struck the student with a glass bottle on the back of his head and took the student's iPod.
Just 25 minutes earlier, a victim was struck multiple times on a CTA bus in the 1300 block of South Racine Avenue before the offenders got off the bus and fled with a cell phone, police said.
Three teens have since been charged in the bus incident.
The Sun-Times Media Wire contributed to this report.
