A string of recent crimes on West Longleaf Drive has students discussing safety.
On Sunday, June 9, three men were wounded and three were killed at a shooting at University Heights Apartments on Longleaf Drive.
In the past month, burglaries, rapes, arrests and thefts have occurred on West Longleaf Drive.
"I think that it's because of limited access," said Shannon Smith, senior in graphic design. "It's easy to get in and out of there pretty easily. It's not controlled as well as it probably should be because it is such a narrow space with a lot of apartments and things on it, a lot of high traffic but low patrol."
Smith lives in an apartment complex on East University.
"My roommate used to live in that apartment complex," Smith said. "In one of the apartments one of the bullets went through one of the windows. She said there were a lot of things that would happen in the pool area that would cause problems in the middle of the night and lot of times police would have to be called."
John Krywicki, junior in mechanical engineering, has lived at University Heights and said he was at his apartment the night of the shooting. He said he thought he heard fireworks.
"I thought it was some college kids goofing off," Krywicki said. "Then I heard screams running up my staircase. Again, I thought nothing of it. Maybe just some drunk hooligans or something like that. It was not until I checked Facebook an hour later when I realized what had happened."
Krywicki said the precautions he takes are locking the doors to his apartment and not visiting the pool area.
"I've even heard there were gang activities, not in this area, but locations similar to that," said Simon Gregg, senior in biosystems engineering. "Neighborhoods, apartment complexes and stuff that have only one entrance tend to lead to gang activity because people can monitor the entrance and they know who is coming in and out."
Gregg said the area has a mass quantity of people in a small location, which causes problems with crime.
"College students are more apt to leave apartments unlocked, because they don't know if their roommates have keys and stuff," Gregg said. "It makes it easy access to try to gank somebody's stuff."
Gregg said gang activity is not necessarily the case for West Longleaf.
"I think the biggest issue is gun control, and getting young people to understand that guns are never the answer in situations like that, especially when alcohol is involved," Smith said.
Smith said she keeps her blinds closed all the time, unless she or her roommates are waiting for someone outside the apartment.
"We keep our doors locked, whether we are in the apartment or not," she said. "We deadbolt and the standard handle lock. And we always check the peephole before we open the door, because we had a series of people who were coming around soliciting and then if no one answered the door would come in and break into the apartments. So we are very cautious."
Smith said she knows patrols are in the area because she hears fire trucks outside of her apartment.
She said she thinks law enforcement does a good job covering the area, but it is still not enough.
"On campus you have the emergency buttons you can go and press, that are placed very conveniently around campus," Smith said. "But when you are in an apartment complex, people have their cell phones, but not everyone remembers that they have them when they need them. And even then, the response isn't as quick as it should be in a lot of cases because voices are confused and garbled along the way."
"I think if apartment complexes could have security systems where you could go push a button and say 'we need help now,' it would be really helpful," Smith said.
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