VCU journalism students help curb daytime crime
According to the annual Safety and Fire Report, larceny is the No. 1 crime by a large margin.
Mason Brown
Staff Writer
According to the annual Safety and Fire Report, larceny is the No. 1 crime by a large margin.
Last Thursday, VCU students refused to let another one occur at VCU by chasing a thief down in the act.
Students in the Eugene P. and Lois E. Trani Center for Life Sciences building chased and captured an alleged thief with outstanding warrants who, according to Mike Porter, VCU public relations specialist, is also a suspect in several other campus larcenies.
The suspect, 33-year-old Kevin M. Wheeler, was charged with larceny, trespassing and possession of a syringe.
At around 2 p.m., a student called police while witnessing a homeless man rummage through a purse in the Center for Life Sciences. Other students chased him out of the building when Wheeler allegedly dumped his syringe into a trash can.
As seen in a video recorded by VCU journalism students Zachary Holden and Nicolas Nightingale via an iPad used for a social-media class, the students surrounded the suspect and waited for police to arrive.
Coincidentally, Holden and Nightingale were working on a story about daytime crime when the students and Wheeler ran by them. Upon seeing the event, Holden and Nightingale pulled out their class-provided iPads and filmed the action as it took place.
“I was walking, when two gentlemen brushed right past me, screaming, ‘Stop that guy, stop that guy,” VCU student Yash Barot told Holden and Nightingale in one of their iPad interviews.
Speaking with CBS6, Nightingale said the timing worked out well for his story.
“It was a moment of luck, doing a story on daytime crime,” Nightingale told CBS6.
Holden and Nightingale were standing outside the Cary Street Gym when they said students run by shouting “thief.”
The two students are in Mass Communications 491: Social Media Journalism. The course works with WTVR CBS 6 in Richmond to give students a chance to work with new technologies, such as the iPad, which – according to professor Marcus Messner – “are changing media.
“Students already understand that an iPad is a cool device, but I wanted to show them how to adapt the journalism skills they’ve learned from other classes for social and mobile media using iPads,” said Messner in a VCU press release regarding the course. CT
To see more work performed by the “iPadjournos” visit http://wtvr.com/tag/ ipadjournos.
