Within the past three months, numerous occasions of robbery and sexual assault have spiked on N.C. State’s campus.
Campus police have utilized additional provisions to respond to the crime increase and investigate the crimes that are still unsolved.
From April 25 to May 5 there were four reported instances of crimes—robbery, sexual assault and an assault on a female.
Marlon Miller, the suspect in the sexual assault case that occurred near the Free Expression Tunnel that occurred on April 25, turned himself in to Wake County officials to face charges of communicating threats, sexual assault and kidnapping this past Sunday.
During the incident, it is alleged that Miller approached a female student on the North side of the Free Expression Tunnel at 4 a.m., pushed the female into the bushes, and sexually assaulted her.Miller allegedly threatened to kill the victim if she screamed.
Miller, 21, lives in Garner less than ten miles away from the location of the incident.
According to Lieutenant Frank Brinkley of the criminal investigation division of the N.C. State Police Department, campus police took extra measures to investigate and help solve the unsolved crimes following that attack.
During that time they increased patrol frequency and the number of private security officers in order to get more eyes and ears on the ground to stop crime, Brinkley said.
Police distributed pictures of the alleged sexual offender, Miller, and administered checkpoints to gather information about who may have committed this crime. Locals subsequently identified Miller to investigators as the person at the Free Expression Tunnel the night when the assault took place.
“We are grateful that the community responded the way that they did,” said Brinkley when discussing the civilian involvement in the investigation.
Of the other three crimes reported, police are continuing to investigate leads although the majority of people who may have information regarding those crimes have left campus for the summer.
Despite this fact, investigators are still “making significant progress,” according to Brinkley.
One of the crimes was later found to be in the jurisdiction of city police officials, who said the incident did not occur on campus.
Despite the recent crime surge, crime on campus has been on the decline this past semester according to the police department. When comparing Spring 2012 to Spring 2013 instances of larceny, motor vehicle theft and burglaries, have decreased by 27 percent, 28 percent and 27 percent respectively.
Instances of larceny, the most prevalent crime on campus, decreased from 180 to 131 from Spring 2012 to Spring 2013.
N.C. State is not the only university afflicted by a sexual assault case.
Lieutenant David Kelly of the campus police department visited Elizabeth City University this Tuesday to help the department recuperate from a recent scandal that caused the chancellor and approximately half of the campus police department to resign, according to sergeant William Davis of the NCSU campus police.
According to local news sources in the area, Anthony Butler, a residence security officer who worked for Elizabeth City University has been taken into custody for allegedly using his position of power to sexually assault student Katherine Lowe.
This altercation prompted an investigation by the Elizabeth City Police who discovered over one hundred and twenty crimes, including eighteen sexual assaults, that took place since 2007 but were never investigated by campus police.
