St. Joe’s issued a Hawk Hill campus lockdown alert at 11:35 a.m. Oct. 3, after the Philadelphia Police Department informed the Office of Public Safety and Security of an armed robbery near the Hawk Hill campus in the Philadelphia and Bala Cynwyd area.
The alert, issued through the university’s emergency notification system, instructed community members to shelter in place, lock doors and windows and not to “leave your location until further notice.” A second alert was sent out at 12:16 p.m. to inform the campus the lockdown was still in effect.
Brandon Pasquale, director of the Office of Public Safety and Security, said the PPD told him to send Hawk Hill into a lockdown after police pursued the suspects’ vehicle, which entered Lower Merion township.
The lockdown was lifted at 1:31 p.m., after the suspects were arrested. Pasquale said the Lower Merion Police Department, PPD and the FBI were involved.
Pasquale said the “whole lockdown went well” on the part of the OPSS, and Public Safety officers followed protocol, which includes patrolling areas of campus and manually locking campus buildings. Pasquale also said there were “areas of improvement” in following protocol for the community at large, adding that he heard students left buildings minutes after the lockdown began.
Ross Radish, J.D., vice president of student life and dean of students, wrote in an email to the St. Joe’s community after lockdown was lifted that there were some who “chose to take chances” and continued moving around campus after the notification.
“While these instances were limited, they serve as an important reminder that ENS alerts must be taken seriously and followed to ensure our community’s safety,” Radish wrote in an email to The Hawk.
Nicole Nwako ’27 said she was in her Moore Hall apartment when the lockdown alert was sent. After seeing the notification, she went to ensure the exterior doors to her building were closed.
“There are people who just simply didn’t care, and they didn’t understand how serious this was,” Nwako said.
Leah Fries ’27 said she was eating lunch in The Kettle when the lockdown alert was displayed on the monitors. Fries said the gates at the entrance of The Kettle were closed following the alert, and staff told students the university was under lockdown. Fries spent the entire two-hour lockdown there.
Mason Kimball ’28, a Hawk Host, was checking in families at the Frances M. Maguire Art Museum for campus tours when his coworker told him the university was on lockdown.
“At no point were [the families] outraged at us, angry at the students or angry at the school,” Kimball said. “They were just like, ‘Wow, this is just a bad situation to be in.’”
Radish told The Hawk the cooperation between community members, OPSS and law enforcement helped to safely manage the lockdown.
“I want to thank our students, faculty and staff for their cooperation and our public safety officers and law enforcement partners for their swift response,” Radish said.
