Katrina Tamondong, Robbed & Harassed along UST. Please take time to read her story. I'm reposting this cause I was once a Thomasian, and I used to feel safe along UST's perimeter. Not anymore.
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I've always read about accounts of people I didn't know about their own experiences of Modus Operandi. I didn't know whether to believe them or not, because these were just forwarded e-mails--I didn't know the victims personally. I certainly never thought I would soon write an account of my own. I am writing this to warn others about the danger surrounding our second home.
My name is Katrina Tamondong, and I am a student at the University of Santo Tomas, Faculty of Arts and Letters. I had been held up around various places (Pureza, Legarda, Lacson, Cubao, etc.) eight times before, but this is the first incident that the perpetrators actually hurt me physically. It was at midnight on the 17th of February when this happened, along Laon Laan, directly in between the streets of Rosarito and Asturias.
I'd always prided myself on knowing my way around the area, because I'd stayed in a dormitory for two years. I'd walked to my friends' dorm at Navarra several times without incident. Which is why right after my policital party meeting at Heaven's Touch Asturias, I left the place alone to visit my friends at Navarra. I had my small black sling bag/pouch bag with me, my cellphone in my pocket, and a small paper bag containing my school papers, an iPod, and my school ID.
I'd just reached the sidewalk at Laon Laan (in between Asturias and Rosarito), and there were three men there. Two of them were just hanging out on the sidewalk, and the other was leaning against his motorcycle nearer to me. I didn't think that the three of them were together. None of them were in any way scary on sight. In fact, the man on the motorcycle had a kind face. And the two others seemed engrossed in a joke. They were dressed decently, one in a black jacket, another in a yellow shirt, and the motorcycle guy in a white shirt. They weren't madungis or menacing in any way. Or so I thought. About three feet away from the two guys, the one in yellow started walking toward me and said in a low voice "Hold-up to." I was frozen for two seconds because I didn't know whether it was a joke or whatever. When I came to my senses, I immediately screamed for help. Instinctively, I turned to the audience nearest me: the guy on the motorcycle. He just smiled sympathetically but he did nothing. That's when it hit me that he was a part of it. I ran back toward Asturias where my friends were, but the two guys immediately caught me before I'd made it. I held on to my bag, confident that it would buy time. I kept screaming for help, and there were a few people on the end of Asturias waiting for their jeep. I thought someone would come to my aid because there were some people who looked at us. And one of them was wearing an AB uniform, a girl with a guy beside her. But I'd been screaming for almost a minute and nobody helped out or even yelled for help for me. The two guys scratched whatever part of me they could reach, and the left-shoulder part of my shirt was ripped wide open. The guy to my left even kicked me, and they hit my head to the pavement twice. They were brutal for guys without weapons. As soon as I'd let go of my purse, they ran toward the direction of the motorcycle, but I couldn't come after them or run for help or watch exactly where they went because I was in shock and as soon as they got the purse, they pushed me to the ground. The sad part was, I was still screaming and going hysterical, lying there with my shirt ripped, my arms bruised, my neck and face all scratched up, my head throbbing, and my upper lip swollen and cut. But nobody came to help out, even though the bystanders were still looking at me and the predators had already disappeared. So I stood up and held the ripped part of my shirt closed, running as fast as I could back to my friends in Asturias, even forgetting to be embarrassed about running around looking the way I did (every bit a victim of harassment). As I passed the bystanders, one guy asked me (with absolutely no sympathy or emotion) "Ay, nahold-up ka?"
It was such a scary experience, more so because none of them (the bad guys) looked threatening in any way, and the one on the motorcycle actually seemed familiar, like his was a face I passed everyday, like a regular tambay or something. When I'd gotten back to Heaven's Touch, my friends helped me calm down somewhat, and I heard that I'm the third in our barkada to be a victim: two others were also students of AB. But they were both just snatching incidents, mine was the first that the men actually hurt the victim. Thank God they had no weapons.
Later, I recounted the story to my sisters and my dad. They were more bothered about the harassment than the robbery. As I told them the story in more detail, where the men touched and ripped my shirt and pulled my jeans, my sister was concerned that it was attempted rape (or assault) as well, and that they only stopped not because they already had the purse but because I was putting up a fight and screaming--they might've been afraid that somebody would come as they were attracted to the noise I was making.
What saddens me about this is that while it's not an isolated incident, nothing is being done about it, especially since it's the students of the University that are being targeted. Also. to the bystanders who just watched but did nothing. I could understand if you were afraid or something, but you didn't have to come closer, you could just have yelled for help, too. And it is especially infuriating that one was a student of my own college, and she did nothing about it.
Today I will be filing a police report, since I've calmed down. I ask any of the witnesses to come forward and send me a message. My family and I would like to catch these criminals, not just for me, but so they won't do it to another student again. This note is available to everyone, feel free to share it. I hope that if you were there, you would have the guts to do what you didn't last night--help out. Who knows, the next vicitm might be a friend of yours, or YOU.
I pray that this won't happen ever again. Thomasians, let's help each other. Let's do something about this.
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By the way, my sisters and several friends reposted this. I saw one reply that made me stop and think if whether or not I was a "hold-up magnet" because this has happened several times to me already. But I don't think so, because I don't even wear flashy stuff or jewelry or dress to kill, nothing that would make robbers think I'm worth robbing. Because believe me, I'm not. I'm not rich, and I'm not stupid, thank you very much. :)
