Student Mugged En Route to Cabot

A junior in Cabot House was robbed of his cell phone at knifepoint Sunday night at 11:15 p.m. while walking from the River toward the Quad.

The robbery, which occurred in front of Gutman Library, was interrupted when the junior, who said he wished to remain anonymous, spotted a Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) officer riding his bicycle nearby and screamed for help.

Shortly thereafter, Cambridge Police officers arrested James K. Miller and Joseph M. Isles Jr., both of Dorchester, and charged them with armed robbery.

The junior said he had been walking back from Quincy House when he noticed two young men who began to follow him as he passed through Brattle Square. He declined to describe his assailants, saying that they “just looked like normal young guys, maybe 18 to 22 years old.”

“I knew they were behind me,” he said. “I started walking faster.”

The junior said that, although he regrets it now, he thought it premature to run away from the men or change his plan to cut through Radcliffe Yard on the way back to the Quad.

“You never really expect anything to happen,” he said.

The junior said that he walked as far as Gutman Library on Brattle Street when one of the men stopped him and asked for the time.

“Then he got in front of me, showed me a knife and asked for my cell phone,” the junior said. The other man walked around behind him.

His cell phone, he said, was one of the main reasons he was targeted for robbery.

The junior was talking on the phone as he first passed the men in Brattle Square and he was still talking when they finally mugged him.

“I saw them glance at it when they first began to follow me,” he said. “I saw it go through their minds. It was the first thing they asked me for.”

After he had relinquished his cell phone, the junior said, one of the men asked to see what was in his pockets.

As he put his hands in his pockets to give up more of his possessions, the HUPD officer turned his bicycle off Appian Way onto Brattle Street. The junior described the officer’s arrival as a “really random act of fortune.”

“He saw us right away, but he could not have known what was going on, so he did not come over to help,” the junior said.

When his attackers turned to look at the officer, however, the junior ran.

“I dropped all of my stuff and began screaming,” he said.

The HUPD officer, he said, then chased after his assailants and detained them. Other HUPD officers soon arrived at the scene.

“HUPD response was great,” the junior said.

The Cambridge Police Department eventually sent officers who arrested the men at the corner of Brattle and Story Streets.

The next day, the junior was contacted by the Middlesex County district attorney’s office, which informed him that the suspects had been arraigned for armed robbery.

He was also contacted by a victims’ advocacy unit with the district attorney’s office. This department, he said, helped him keep his name out of the public record.

“We had the judge impound the case files,” he said. “I don’t want the guys who robbed me to know my name.”

The junior explained that he will testify against them in court and, since armed robbery can carry a stiff jail sentence, he is worried about potential reprisal.

The district attorney’s office also agreed to contact him when the suspects post bail.

“The judge issued a low bail,” he said. “But as far as I know, they haven’t posted it.”

The junior said in the future he plans to suspend embarrassment in favor of personal safety.

“From now on, if I’m suspicious, I’m going to act on it. It’s better to be safe than sorry,” he said.

—Staff writer Alex B. Ginsberg can be reached at ginsberg@fas.harvard.edu.