Hearing-impaired student robbed at gunpoint yesterday

In an unrelated incident, a homeless man died after being found on campus. A partially deaf student -- who did not hear his friend's warnings that a man with a gun was running up behind him -- was struck in the head and robbed at gunpoint early yesterday morning near 39th and Sansom streets. Three suspects are still at large in yesterday morning's robbery, according to University Police Detective John Peterson, who is investigating the incident with the Philadelphia Police Department's Southwest Detectives Bureau. Peterson explained that two male seniors were walking north on 39th Street as they returned home from Chats when they noticed a man talking with two other men in a white sport-utility vehicle parked in front of the University of Pennsylvania Federal Credit Union at 39th and Chestnut streets. The man began following the two students down Sansom Street while the vehicle -- resembling a Jeep or Nissan Pathfinder -- waited nearby, Peterson said. When the non-hearing-impaired student heard the man running behind them on Sansom, he ran onto the porch of a nearby house and attempted to warn his friend that a man was about to strike him. But the student, who wears a hearing aid on his right ear, did not hear his friend's cries in time. The perpetrator struck the partially-deaf student in the head with a silver semiautomatic pistol, then apparently tore the student's pants open and stole his wallet containing $6 in cash and his PennCard before fleeing with the other two men in the getaway vehicle. The student -- disoriented from the attack and unable to discern the direction in which the automobile traveled -- was treated and released from HUP for minor head injuries, Peterson added. Police described the suspect who robbed the student as a 5 feet 10 inches tall, 25-year-old African American male weighing approximately 140 lbs., with short cropped hair and wearing a dark sweatshirt and blue jeans. The other two men in the getaway vehicle were also described as African American men. Also yesterday, an unidentified homeless man died in the afternoon at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania after a University Police officer found him unconscious outside David Rittenhouse Laboratory at 33rd and Walnut streets. University Police Officer Cornell Thomas discovered an unconscious man lying on the grass outside DRL at approximately 11:00 a.m. yesterday. The man was transported to HUP, where he was pronounced dead at 1:47 p.m. Peterson said University Police officers had seen the man outside DRL only the past two or three days and did not consider him a campus "regular." "Our officers on day work were trying to get him into a shelter, which he didn't want to go to," Peterson said. University Police does try to transport homeless people to shelters, in conjunction with city efforts to prevent deaths from extreme weather, but they cannot arrest those who refuse offers for help. Philadelphia Health Department Jeff Moran said he could not give the man's cause of death because an autopsy has not yet been performed, but Peterson said the cause was probably hypothermia. Moran added that he did not know the man's age.