Sorority suspicions
Good things rarely come in suspicious packages as one student learned after she received two of them from halfway across the world.
A University of Arizona Police Department officer met the student who had received a suspicious package at the Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority house on Sept. 23.
The student told the officer that she had first seen the box addressed to her in the house’s mail room. The sorority house manager had brought in the package around noon after picking up the mail from the house’s mailbox on Mountain Avenue.
The student picked up the package, a 4 inch by 6 inch yellow padded envelope. When she opened it, there was a small, strange, square item. The item was sealed and contained another strange, round object inside.
It was then that she noticed the package was sent from Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, a country in central Asia.
The student told the officer that she did not know anyone from Kyrgyzstan or the surrounding region. She also no longer lived in the Alpha Epsilon Phi house, though she had during the 2017-2018 school year.
After she first touched the package and realized where it was from, the student placed it in a large Ziploc bag and washed her hands several times. When speaking with the officer, the student said she felt fine, though she repeatedly checked her hands for signs of burns or other injuries. No one else in the sorority house felt physically sick after the package arrived, though many of them wanted it gone, according to the student.
The officer took photos of the package as evidence and took it away to be properly destroyed.
The next day, Sept. 24, the student called UAPD to report that she had received a second package, according to her sorority sisters. She had not been to the house yet to see it and this package had not been opened.
She gave her house mother permission to release the package into the care of the officer to also be destroyed. The officer advised the house mother, who handles the mail, to call UAPD if any more suspicious packages are found.
Lost in the sauce
Two young people drinking in the parking lot and making out is not a rare find. An officer can probably discover a couple without looking too hard. What is rarer is solving a missing persons case in the process.
A UAPD officer was patrolling Tyndall Avenue Garage when he saw a seemingly empty red car taking up two parking spots on Sept. 27 at around 2:50 a.m.
The officer went over to check it out when a man opened the driver’s side door, releasing a smell of alcohol from the car.
The man, a UA student, had bloodshot eyes. The person in the passenger’s seat did not exhibit any signs of alcohol consumption. The officer reported he could see a bottle of Smirnoff vodka on the driver’s side floor that was clearly missing some of its former contents. There were also two bottles of orange juice in the cup holders, though only one looked like it had been partially consumed.
The officer asked to speak with the man. The man exited the car for their conversation and said, without any provocation, “I’m not going to lie, we parked here, I had a couple of drinks and we were making out,” according to the officer. He also said that he had not been planning to drive anywhere.
After their initial conversation, the officer performed a records check on the man and found that he had been reported missing to the Tucson Police Department.
The officer called the number associated with the missing persons report and told the reporting party that the man was okay. The reporting party thanked the officer for the information.
The man and the officer continued their conversation. The man said he and the woman had met online and become friends. They decided to come to the garage to hang out. He had brought a bottle of vodka and drank some while parked before the officer arrived. The woman confirmed much of the man’s story.
The officer cited and released the man for consuming liquor in public.
Follow Vanessa Ontiveros on Twitter
