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4:35 p.m., Dec. 13, 2002--Two suspects responsible for robbing students at gunpoint on campus Nov. 24 are now in custody. They were arrested last night, Thursday, Dec. 12, by the Pennsylvania State Police for similar robberies in the Avondale area, Larry Thornton, UD director of public safety, said.
It was an especially unlucky night for the pair. While they were in custody at the State Police Barracks, a video showing two suspects purchasing items at a store with a credit card taken during the campus robbery was aired on the Channel 6 News. The suspects were identified as they sat there.
Caroline Welch, public affairs specialist for Channel 6, said she had never heard of suspects actually seeing themselves on television while they were being booked for another crime. “There must be great synergy between the police and Action News,” she said.
The video, taped at a Walmart in Elkton, Md., and prepared for television by the UD Department of Public Safety, was made available to Channel 6, WHYY Channel 12 and campus television by the Office of Public Relations.
The two suspects, Jeremy Pimer, 19, of Avondale, Pa., and Anthony P. Starkey, 18, of Jacksonville, N.C., are Marine Corps deserters from North Carolina. They have implicated a third Marine who is no longer in the area.
UD investigators worked through the night with the Pennsylvania officers and have linked the suspects to a robbery on Laird Campus on Nov. 24, robberies on South Campus and Laird Campus on Dec. 8, and two robberies just off campus in the Southgate Apartment Complex.
UD investigators are preparing charges against the suspects for the campus robberies and the Newark Police will file charges in the Southgate robberies, Thornton said.
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