Pitt students robbed on Atwood St.

The blinds are drawn and the lights aren’t on in the front windows. When the doorbell echoes… The blinds are drawn and the lights aren’t on in the front windows. When the doorbell echoes somewhere in the three-story house, it is answered with silence.

The peephole goes from yellow to black, and it stays dark for almost a minute, but there are no additional motions or sounds.

Finally, two locks click open, but the door does not sweep away from the frame — it spreads slowly to create a crack, and Andrew Lally’s head slips through the gap that is almost too small for him.

This is the kind of care someone takes after he’s had a gun pointed at him in his own home.

On Sunday, Oct. 29, four men walked into 334 Atwood St. carrying pistols and walked out carrying $10,000 worth of cash and electronics, but they also took eight students’ feelings of security.

Before the robbery, John Lucente described the house as a place where people could come and go freely. The doors were often unlocked, and the eight men who lived there often hosted parties.

The night of the robbery, two of the roommates had gone to see a movie, and the other six decided to stay in, five of them on the third floor and one on the second.

At 8:30 p.m., Lucente sat in his room, setting up his new laptop that he had bought that day, when two black men came up the stairs. They wore “big, puffy jackets” and were masked, he said.

“I thought it was a Halloween joke at first,” Lucente said.

He quickly learned that the intruders weren’t joking when they started pointing their guns at him.

They told him to get down on the ground as they constantly kept him in the sights of their pistols, he said. They plundered the two second story bedrooms, treating themselves to a Playstation, video games, money, an iPod, DVDs and Lucente’s new laptop.

“I bought my laptop that day,” he said. “I was just plugging it in.”

They patted Lucente down, searching his pockets for cell phones, money or anything else that felt valuable. After they had ransacked the second floor, one of the men went upstairs while the barrel of the other man’s gun watched Lucente until two more men came to the second floor, similarly attired.

The two additional burglars took over guard duty, but showed Lucente no weapons, while the other man joined his accomplice on the third floor.

On the third floor that night, Lally and four of his roommates were watching the Cowboys play the Panthers. Lally, sporting a Cowboys jersey, said he was a big fan of the Dallas football team.

The game was interrupted when the man in black held up the roommates, masked by a bandana as if he were a train robber for Halloween.

Like Lucente, Lally and his roommates thought the masked man was joking when he aimed his gun and told them not to move.

“We thought he was just kidding,” Lally said.

The robber made all the men give him their wallets and cell phones before taking anything else that caught his eye on the third floor. One of the two visibly armed robbers kept his eyes and weapon on the men at all times.

Micah Carson said the thieves took his laptop, mp3 player, Playstation and even his alarm clock.

Since the robbery, the eight roommates have not slept in their apartment for a week, but instead they have went to friends’ houses, a hotel, their homes and the Litchfield Towers, where Pitt has set up two four-person rooms in two lounges.

Marcee Radakovich, director of Student Health in Pitt’s Division of Student Affairs, said she helped the victims by working with their advisers and professors to reschedule their spring registration dates and class commitments.

“We will always try to do what we can to help students in extenuating circumstances,” she said.

The students have been in constant contact with the police, who are checking pawn shops for the stolen items and any leads on who the criminals might be.

Tammy Ewin, public information officer for the Pittsburgh Police Department, said this type of incident, in which a criminal robs an innocent person in his own home, is known as a home invasion robbery.

“True, legitimate home invasion robberies are not common anywhere in the city,” Ewin said.

Most similar incidents don’t count as home invasion robberies because they are drug related and the victim knows the criminal. This means the victims of the theft are not completely uninvolved with the crime.

Ewin said the police are investigating a man who came into the house through the back door about 15 minutes before the robbery. He asked Lucente if one of the roommates was there, and when Lucente said yes the man left again.

Carson said he thought one of the robbers might have been at a party the night before the home invasion, but he did not know the man’s name.

The roommates and their landlord have taken steps to prevent this from happening again. The eight men had a house meeting, and as a result their house is no longer free and open to the public.

Lucente said their landlord added new door frames and metal window bars. The students’ parents are also looking into getting them a security system.

The other men who lived in the house are Alex Gordon, Brian Longin, Mike Doughty, Matt Gloth and Brandon Cummings.