Man robbed at noon near Superblock

A 19-year-old Pakistani visitor to the United States was robbed at knifepoint and gunpoint by two men behind the High Rise North building at approximately noon yesterday, police said. Two men stole $700 in cash and a Pakistani passport and identification card from Mahmmad Khalib-Ali, who has been in America for a month thus far on a visit from Karachi. However, he was not injured by the two armed men, neither of whom has been arrested. Before he was robbed, Khalib-Ali had been walking around campus in an attempt to acquaint himself with West Philadelphia. Khalib-Ali's wandering led him to the grassy area between High Rise North and Low Rise North, where two men approached him from behind and told him not to move. "I [was] walking here and then two guys come, and he [one of the men] is coming to back, and he see me stop," Khalib-Ali said. "And I look the back, he said 'don't move.' " "And one guy come -- he push me behind the wall, and he takes my handbag and my purse. And he said, 'Don't move. If you do, I shoot you, I kill you,' " he added. The two men fled across the knoll and north on 39th Street with Khalib-Ali's money, passport and identification. The victim said he continued to lie on the ground for five minutes. Descriptions of the two men are vague, said the University Police, both because the robbers allegedly told Khalib-Ali "Don't turn around" and because of the victim's limited command of English. University Police Sergeant Lawrence Salotti said yesterday the department's only description lists one of the men as last seen wearing a black jacket and light-colored jeans, and the other as wearing a brown jacket and light-colored jeans. Salotti said both robbers were of medium height. Officer Tommy Thompson of the West Detectives Division of the Philadelphia Police Department added that both men were black and appeared to be approximately 18 years old. Five minutes after the robbers fled, Khalib-Ali called Philadelphia Police from a public phone. Khalib-Ali did not call University Police from the blue-light phone approximately thirty yards from the scene of the crime because he was not aware of its function. Before Philadelphia Police officers arrived on the scene, Khalib-Ali spotted Officer William Kane of the University Police and flagged him down. Khalib-Ali began to explain what had happened, but West Detectives officers arrived in the middle of his explanation, taking him to their office for questioning. Khalib-Ali, who is a businessman in Karachi, has not told his family about the robbery because "my family is depressed." While in the U.S., Khalib-Ali has been staying with a friend in New Jersey. This friend gave him the name of another friend living on the 4100 block of Walnut Street, whom Khalib-Ali came to visit. Khalib-Ali said he plans to return to Pakistan in one or two weeks and that he is uncertain whether he will ever return to the U.S. "I like America but I don't like some people," Khalib-Ali said. "In America some people is not so good." Overall, Khalib-Ali said he was quite unhappy. "This tragedy is not good with me," he concluded. (CUT LINE) Please see CRIME, page 4 CRIME, from page 1

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