Community members are beginning to speak out about the handling of Friday’s alleged rape in Gardena, where the victim was an El Camino student.
A neighbor of the victim said the crime happened Friday morning. The Nixle alert wasn’t sent until just before 3 p.m. that same day, hours after the crime occurred and at least two hours after police cars had responded to a Gardena home where the victim, an international student, was renting a room.
One EC student said it’s not the first time there’s been a delay in letting people know about crimes in the area.
“The school (doesn’t let us know things),” Gabriella Reyes, 29, music major, said. “It’s kind of sad. There was one student who wanted to do a mass murder. I think there was a teacher who said something, but no one listened to her. They called police and they didn’t let students know until a month later. During that period, anything could have happened.”
Reyes was referring to a alleged threatened mass killing made on campus last semester. Students weren’t alerted about the threat until several weeks later.
Karl Striepe, a faculty member, said the most important thing for students, especially international ones, to do is be aware. He said they need to be educated and know what area they’ll be living in when they come to EC.
“They’ve been opening up dorms for international students; is there a safer setting students are finding on their own?” Striepe said. “El Camino can offer students some guidance.”
Community Relations Director Ann Garten did not comment by deadline for third day in a row yesterday and the second time since ECPD Police Chief Michael Trevis confirmed the victim of the alleged rape is a student.
A total number of 2,358 (9.7 percent) students live in Gardena, including both international and American students, according to EC Facts and Figures for fall 2014.
There are about 650 international students at EC and 85 percent of them come from Southeast and Northeast Asia, Leonid Rachman of the International Student Program said.
According to the El Camino Police Department webpage, eight advisories and four alerts have been sent out via Nixle, the opt-in alert text message system, in the past year.
The first advisory sent during that time was about the alleged threatened mass killing. The most recent, from six days ago, was about the search for the rape suspect.
