‘I was fearing for my life’ – How a pregnant woman has been robbing SU students

There is a dangerous pregnant woman on South Campus. She walks up to people asking for help, and when they agree to help her, she makes them drive to dangerous areas of Syracuse and robs them. This leaves some SU students fearing for their life. DPS sent out a public safety report a few days ago, but what they neglected to mention was how long the issue has been going on, and how widespread it is.

The Tab was able to speak to one of the victims, a junior at SU who is an inclusive elementary and special education major.

According to them, this woman has been running this con since school started. On only the second day of school, an SU student was approached by her outside of Tops on Nottingham road.

“I got back in my car when I heard a knock on my window. I rolled down my window and this woman was standing there. She was a black woman, medium height, and was wearing a green and black dress with gold lipstick on.”

The student said it was obvious the woman was pregnant and also had a large bag on her. This is what happened when the woman approached the victim.

“She started talking about how her car broke down and she needs help. She said she called DPS and they said that they were going to tow it and she needed help so it wouldn’t get towed. I had always been raised to be a nice person and to do the right thing. Whenever I am in a situation like this or where I could help anyone – whether I know them or not – I think about how it is what my grandma or my mom would do. I saw this as an opportunity to help someone in need. I obviously didn’t know what was going to happen.”

The pregnant woman has also been seen by Varsity

She agreed to help the woman, having no idea what would soon happen. The student agreed to take the pregnant woman to a gas station, knowing there was one close by, but she said no and that they needed to go to a different one that had cans to fill with gas. Interestingly, the student says she never felt like she was in any danger.

Then the woman said she was on the phone with her boss and that she actually needed to go to a patient’s house to take care of them, or get fired. Instead of going to the gas station, they needed to go to her friend’s house, and her friend would take care of the car with no gas. It was then that the SU student started getting uncomfortable.

“We eventually pull up to this house and there were a whole bunch of huge men sitting on the stoop. She then gets really aggressive and asks me how much money I had. I said I didn’t have any cash on me and she then started telling me to stop lying and she wants to see my wallet. As this is happening, one of the guys gets up and starts walking towards my car. I then went into panic mode and gave her the $35 I had in my wallet. She said ‘Don’t you move, I’m coming back.’  The guy that was walking towards my car was now next to my car to make sure I wouldn’t leave. She walked into the house and gave a guy some money. I was now fearing for my life.”

“She directed me to another house [and] we pulled up to this pink house where all of the windows were smashed in. There were a whole bunch of big men on the porch again that were smoking. There were little kids running in the street and everything. She started to ask me if I knew how to get home from here – in all honesty I didn’t. I just needed to get her out of the car so I said yes. she asked me three more times and I insisted I knew.”

When the woman got out of the car, the student says, one of the men at the house stood up and shouted “bitch, do you have my money?”

“He lifted up his shirt and implied that he had a gun. This is when I started to sweat and really needed to get out of there.”

After, the student says she was a mess. She knew she was lucky to have gotten out alive. She called her mom, and went home, not calling DPS because she had said she would help the pregnant nurse.

She then went and told all of her friends, some of whom had the same story, being approached in places such as the Manley bus stop. She also posted it in all of the “Class of…” groups to spread awareness, where even more student said the same thing had happened to them.

After she posted her story on the Class of 2018 page, more students came forward saying the same thing had happened to them. Some people had it happen to them at Tops as well, but some even experienced it on Marshall St., by Varsity Pizza.

Between these incidents, and the second DPS report we received, about an alum being robbed, we all need to be a little more on guard.