Two female students said they were robbed at gunpoint by a masked man early Tuesday morning behind the Taco Bell on south campus.

According to the police report, at about 2:30 a.m., the four girls exited Taco Bell and were walking in the alley between West 10th Avenue and West 9th Avenue when a man came out from behind a garage and approached them armed with a black semi-automatic handgun.

A victim of the reported robbery, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Lantern she thought the “gun was an automatic, not a revolver, had a square barrel and a wooden handle.”

The woman described the suspect to The Lantern as an “African-American, 5-foot-8 or 5-foot-9 and about 160 pounds.” This differs from the crime alert on OSU’s website, which described the man as 6 feet tall.

Both the Columbus police report and the victim described the suspect as wearing a navy blue T-shirt, dark colored pants and a brown bandana over his face.

He demanded that two of the women put down everything they had on them, according to both the report and the victim. Two of the four girls had fled already, one off to the side of the alley to hide behind a dumpster and the other toward High Street.

The two girls standing with the gunman threw their wallets on the ground, she said.

They then ran westbound down the alley toward Neil Avenue, where they stood and called for the other girls before walking onto the porch of a person on 10th Avenue who called the police for them.

The suspect fled in an unknown direction, according to the report.

Victims of the robbery said they did not expect this because they were not in a bad area and were all together.

“We were walking arm-in-arm, four girls across. It was pretty well-lit, it wasn’t a dark scary alley,” the anonymous victim said.

“We always make sure we never walk alone,” said Charlott Goldstein, one of the victims of the robbery. “It’s not like it was two of us.”

This is not the first incident of crime to take place at this Taco Bell.

Colleen Carpenter, 17 at the time, was shot in the face during a drive-by shooting in June 2009. Carpenter survived and three men, Guy Banks, Chase Banks and Myron Banks were arrested and charged with felonious assault for the shooting.

Anyone with information on the robbery or the suspect is asked to call OSU Police at 292-2121, Central Ohio Crime Stoppers at 461-TIPS or University Crime Stoppers at 271-TIPS.