The Honda stopped at the stop sign like any other car would. Tiffany Cooper, a 19-year-old freshman psychology major at UCF, and her five friends didn't think much of it.
But a group of men got out of the car and demanded their money.
"Once they started saying, ‘Hey, give me your money and drop your wallets on the ground,' then it was quite clear what they wanted," Cooper said.
At first it was just a single guy getting out of the car — nothing out of the ordinary. But that changed quickly.
"It was really fast," Cooper said. "He got out of the car and ran at us."
The first guy ran at them, but two more got out behind him. When Cooper saw that the man running at her and her friends had a knife, she ran.
"I literally ran, like the fastest ever," Cooper said. "Like, I don't even know how I ran that fast."
She ran straight for the Visual Arts Building's parking lot, which is across the street from her Lake Claire apartment on campus. She didn't drop her wallet, or hand over the $8 she had left after spending the night at Knight Library, a local bar just across Alafaya Trail from UCF.
Cooper said she turned around for a second to see if any of her assailants knew where she was running before she was going to make a dash for her apartment. She knew no one was right behind her, but she wanted to make sure no one was watching her. That's when she saw Jeff Harper, one of three men she met at Knight Library, being chased by the first guy out of the car with a knife.
"He was trying to cut him, I guess, or stab him," Cooper said. "And I saw him catch the back of his shirt. Like that's how close he was."
Harper wasn't injured, but the back of his shirt was sliced from about halfway down his back to the bottom of the shirt, Cooper said.
The man stopped chasing Harper. Cooper thought it was because he was so far away from his car.
Cooper, Harper and the other four made their escape and met up at Cooper's apartment and called the police.
Cooper, her roommate Melanie Dominguez, 18, Brooke Stanley, 19, and Dakota Lewis, 21, all UCF students; and Harper, 23, David Dawkins, 22, who are not UCF students, were safe, and didn't lose any belongings, Cooper said. But their experience in the early morning hours of March 26 is just one example of what UCF Police spokesman Sgt. Troy Williamson dubbed "March madness."
There were five robberies in the UCF Police's jurisdiction during March, according to UCF Police. In contrast, there were only five in 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined, according to UCF Police's 2010 Annual Security & Fire Safety Guide.
"January was very quiet. You could hear pins drop on the other side of campus," Williamson said. "But March has just been highly active.
"The detectives have been very active. The patrol division has been hard at it and writing the reports up and the message is out throughout our office."
UCF Police said that Cooper's experience came just minutes before another group of UCF students were robbed by the same men after riding a KnightLynx bus back to campus from the Knight Library.
KnightLynx is a free, two-route, late-night bus service that was started this semester. It runs from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. on Friday and Saturday.
Police say that the second group, four UCF students, was approached by the same Honda driven by the other group's assailants, and robbed around Aquarius Agora Drive and Gemini Boulevard.
Other robberies in March included a robbery at the Arbour Apartments off Alafaya Trail on March 23, where two men were shot in the leg, and two strong-arm robberies at Pegasus Pointe on March 12. All cases are still open and being investigated, UCF Police said.
"Like most students know, they are here by the grace of the student loans, grants, parents; whatever they can gather up to go to college," Williamson said. "I know that students are not the wealthiest ones at this time and I don't think that those that robbed our students know that."
Police said they have stepped up their patrols on Alafaya Trail, as well as the school's parking lots, looking for the green or gray Honda they say was involved in the robberies. But the most alarming facts in the two most recent robberies are the sizes of the groups robbed, that one group rode the school's late night bus service and that the UCF Police's Safe Escort Patrol Service, which will transport students across campus at night, only operates from Sunday to Thursday, not on Friday and Saturday nights. Williamson believes Friday and Saturday are two of the most active nights for crime each week.
"We've done it [walked home at night from Knight Library] plenty of times with less people, which is what's concerning," Cooper said. "We had six people with us and they still took on twice the people they had."
UCF Police recommend traveling in large groups, but Cooper said she will not trust the safety of large groups when traveling across campus at night.
Three freshmen waiting for a KnightLynx bus in front of the UCF Arena said they feel safe on campus at night, either by themselves or with a group.
"I'll walk across campus by myself and I'm not scared," said Trish Luksich, an 18-year-old pre-clinical physical therapy major. "Since it's so well lit and stuff, I feel safe."
Luksich, Kevin Padula, an 18-year-old video game design major, and Jack Giordano, an 18-year old biochemistry major, look to KnightLynx as their main form of transportation to shops at Waterford Lakes Town Center and said they feel KnightLynx is a safe option when traveling at night.
But while waiting for the bus on April 2, they said they waited about 40 minutes for a bus on the blue line to arrive. And although they waited at a well-lit bus stop in front of the UCF Arena, other stops, like the one by Lake Claire apartments, are dark at night, making students easy targets.
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