PRESIDENT of the Guild of Students at The Mico University College in St Andrew, Shavoy Lyons, has appealed for increased police presence in the vicinity of the institution amid concerns that students are being abducted and robbed there.

“Over the past couple of weeks, we have been hearing about frequent robberies especially on Marescaux Road as well as on Arnold Road. I believe that stronger police presence is supposed to be on these streets especially seeing that college students are living on campus and close by,” Lyons said.

He raised concern moments after hoodlums travelling in two Toyota Axio motor cars abducted and robbed a 21-year-old guild member on Tuesday.

The survivor, whose name is being withheld, told the Jamaica Observer that he left the university’s campus shortly after 7:00 pm to buy food a relatively short distance away at Cross Roads. According to him, purchasing meals off campus had became important because an administrator locked the kitchen on Mills Hall, leaving students who live there with nowhere to prepare food after 8:00 pm.

The student claimed that, while he waited outside the campus for a taxi, a grey Toyota Axio motor car stopped beside him.

Another car — a white Toyota Axio — appeared and its occupant reportedly ordered the student to go into the vehicle that had stopped earlier.

The victim stated that he was taken to an area near the education ministry’s headquarters and robbed of his cellphone, cash and bank card. He also was reportedly beaten and ordered to disclose banking information, which the hoodlums used to withdraw funds from his account.

“They said they were going to kill me,” the student recounted, adding that the presumed killing was put on hold after one abductor encouraged his cronies to wait a while longer. The survivor said he, however, did not see the robbers with any weapon.

Further reports are that the abductors forced the student to jump into a gully near the education ministry.

“I started running away in the gully until I saw the main road,” added the student, who said he was left without fare and the pair of slippers he had.

“I walked back barefooted to campus,” he told the Observer. “I feel terrified. I don’t even know what to say; I just feel like I want to cry because I am scared; I don’t know what else may happen to me; I think I may just go back home [to St Thomas] because this experience is awful.”

When the survivor returned to Mico University College and related his ordeal, boarders there unloaded fury on the hoodlums as well as the university’s administration.

One of them fumed: “Him (the survivor) never did haffi live to come tell wi the tales. A serious thing this! The kitchen [on Mills Hall] lock because Mico decided that the men not keeping it clean. They lock the kitchen which forced some persons to go on the road to get food… The administration [of the university] know about the robberies taking place in recent times and still lock down the kitchen weh everybody should use; 40 man a use one small space fi a kitchen.”

The guild president, Lyons, in the meantime, stated that he was not aware of any formal decision to deny students access to the kitchen at any point.

He promised to take the students’ grouse to the university’s administrators.

“It is indeed very scary; I find it traumatizing for my colleagues. They have to be walking in groups, etcetera,” Lyons added. “Our safest route now to Cross Roads especially in the evenings to get something to eat is through taxis. If it is that our transportation means are not safe, then it leaves questions as to what exactly is safe… Our next step as a council is to engage the university’s administration as to how best we can have safer transportation or safer means to get to and from campus for our students.”