Justin Sudduth parked his car outside of his friend’s apartment at The Suites at Overton Park on Saturday night before going out to a bar on Broadway. He locked it and took the keys with him. When he returned, his car was gone.
“My immediate thought was that maybe it just got towed,” the senior microbiology major said. “So I called all the towing companies, and they didn’t have my car.”
After checking with the towing companies again in the morning, Sudduth said, he reported his car stolen. On Monday, an officer called him to tell him the car had been located on 21st Street.
“There wasn’t any major damage to it, other than my headlight was busted and there was no gas left in my car,” he said.
Police have not been able to identify a suspect in Sudduth’s car theft case. He feels lucky that he got it back. Even though he had his keys when his car was stolen, he advises others to always lock their cars and never leave them running.
The Horn/Knapp parking lot (left) is accessible from University Avenue. Maddy McCarty/The Hub@TTU
Sudduth is not the only Tech student who almost lost his car. On Sunday, Texas Tech Emergency Alert sent a warning about an aggravated robbery involving a female student, who said she was approached by a man with a handgun in the parking lot on the east side of Horn Hall, an all-female dorm near the corner of University Avenue and 19th Street.
The woman who reported the incident said the robber demanded that she exit her vehicle and give it to him. In response, she started to scream and hit him in the head with her hand. He then took her purse and keys and left in a blue Chevrolet Cavalier with three other men.
Another female student reported walking in front of Gordon Hall just before the attempted carjacking when a blue Chevrolet Cavalier, similar to the one involved in the other incident, stopped in front of her. She said a man told her to get in the car and she refused.
The Texas Tech and Lubbock police departments are still investigating the two incidents.
In the meantime, some students say this week’s emergency alert only intensified the safety concerns they already had.
Michaela Glendening, a freshman business marketing major from Temple, Texas, said she had been worried about her safety because the parking lot of Horn Hall is not large enough, forcing her and some of her female friends to park in a different dorm’s parking lot and walk a long distance.
“My friend and I had driven back to our dorm that night 20 minutes after the attack occurred,” Glendening said. “If we would have been back earlier, it could have been us.”
She said she had received a parking ticket before when she tried to park closer to her residence hall. She did this, she said, because she did not feel safe walking from the Talkington Hall lot, where she is supposed to park, to Horn Hall at night.
The Talkington parking lot is separated from Horn/Knapp by the McKenzie-Merket Alumni Center. Maddy McCarty/The Hub@TTU
“There are not enough parking spaces for the girls living there,” Glendening said, adding that Texas Tech could improve the safety around her dorm by adding more parking, more lighting and more patrol cars at night.
The aggravated robbery, however, happened in the parking lot closer to Horn Hall, not Talkington. This parking lot is accessible by turning off of University Avenue.
The incident on Sunday surprised Sudduth, who worries the suspect may have been the same person who stole his car.
“They could’ve driven it to Mexico, to a chop shop or something,” he said.
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