Rachel Yeates, Campus Carrier managing editor
Last Saturday, Berry’s annual Freshmen Service Day took an unusual twist for three first-year seminar classes when students, mentors and faculty advisers found themselves in possession of a wallet connected to an aggravated assault and armed robbery, according to a spokesperson from the Rome Police Department.
The assault and robbery took place Aug. 29 at 305 Waddell St., just a block away from North Rome United Methodist Church where Berry students would days later meet to clean up trash and overgrown areas of the surrounding neighborhood.
Andrew Bressette, associate provost and dean of academic services, was one of the faculty advisers present. Bressette had brought his 16-year-old son Drew to the clean up.
“Drew was working with my class that day,” Bressette said. “And as they were cleaning some brush next to one of the churches, he found a wallet. He looked at it and realized it still had license and credit cards and everything in it.”
A member of the neighborhood association they were working with alerted the police.
“When the police came, they questioned my son Drew and myself,” Bressette said. “It turned out the wallet belonged to the victim of … an aggravated assault the night before.”
The police left, only to return an hour later.
“They said they were going to go surround the home where the suspect was to see if they could apprehend or arrest him,” Bressette said.
The police advised them to go into the church’s basement “in case the suspect fled or escaped because they weren’t sure if he was armed,” Bressette said.
Some present, like junior and first-year mentor Megan Benson, were not aware of any incident until the police returned and instructed them to stay out of sight for a few minutes.
“I saw the three cops cars there,” Benson said. “[The police] were all suiting up with rifles and pistols, and all the students were confused because most of us didn’t know what was going on.”
For such an intense situation, she thought the advisers did an excellent job maintaining order. They took “precautions for all the students there,” she said.
She also said it was exciting to be able to “help the community not just in service but also with criminal justice.”
There were 60 students involved in the clean up effort. He said their work inspired several people to come out and work on their yards. Investigated cases aside, three different classes came together to beautify an area of the Rome community. “There were several neighbors who stopped to thank the students,” Bressette said.
As for the excitement of first-year service day, he said “It was a fun twist – a bit unnerving at the moment, but everyone was safe and that was good.”
Rome police notified the victim on Wednesday that his wallet had been recovered and are working to get it returned to him.