When a Tufts junior was held up at gunpoint early Friday morning, he lost his cell phone and his laptop. But he still had the wherewithal to ask for his phone's SIM card back.
"I don't know why - they have a gun pointed to me - [but] I'm like, 'Oh, I don't want to start one of these Facebook groups,'" the victim Jason Safer told the Daily.
He was referring to forums that people make on Facebook.com after losing their cell phones in order to recollect their friends' numbers.
"So I'm like, 'Wait, wait, just give me my SIM card, please let me have my SIM card," Safer said. "And the guys are like, 'Okay, give him his SIM card, take out your SIM card.'"
A SIM card, or Subscriber Identity Module, is a small, removable device inside a cell phone that stores data such as other people's phone numbers.
Safer described the two men who robbed him on the corner of Curtis St. and Conwell Ave. as "two big African-American males, [both] six feet [tall]."
They approached him at about 1 a.m. "[They] pretty much [came] out of nowhere," he said. "They just [came] right up to me and they ... said, 'Gimme your laptop.' I just kind of stood there kind of surprised. One took a gun out and pointed it right to my chest. So at that point I handed them the laptop."
Next, the men asked Safer for his cell phone, which he gave to them. It was at this point that he thought to ask for his SIM card back, leading to a fairly unusual exchange.
"So they give me my phone," Safer said. "I'm, like, scrambling ... trying to get it out, and I can't get it out. So the guy grabs it from me and he tries to get it out. Then I don't know why I did this but for some reason I grabbed it back from him."
After Safer had retrieved his SIM card and returned the phone to the robbers, they demanded that he give them money. In another unusual decision, Safer lied to them, telling them that he didn't have his wallet.
"[It] was just quick thinking, because I knew they were in a rush, so I didn't think they were going to check," he said. "So I acted more panicked than I was, and I said, 'I don't have any money. I just have my ID and that's it.' But I had my wallet right in my pocket with you know my credit card, my license, everything."
In the wallet, Safer had $100 in cash, he said.
"They believed me when I said I just had my ID. And then they turned around and went to walk up Curtis towards Medford," he said.
Safer stayed where he was, looking for a police officer or someone else who could help him get in touch with authorities. When the men were about 100 feet away, they stopped walking and turned around, Safer said.
"They started walking back towards me, and they started coming after me again because they didn't like the fact that I was watching where they were going," he said. "So I hid behind a bush in the front yard."
"So I'm hiding behind the bush, being followed by a guy with a gun," Safer continued. "They come by like 30 seconds later, and they say, 'Hey, we know you're hiding. Come out - we know you're hiding.'"
When Safer emerged, the men told him to climb a nearby fence and leave, which he did. He soon came across a friend, who helped him call the Tufts University Police Department (TUPD).
"TUPD was very helpful," he said. "They were nice when they came. ... As soon as they got there they asked me for a description of the guys. It was tough because I just ... saw what they looked like but I just wasn't registering it at that point."
The Somerville Police Department (SPD) is currently handling the case with the help of TUPD.
Captain Paul Upton, the public information officer for SPD, told the Daily that there were one or two similar robberies in the greater-Boston area which had college students as victims within 24 hours of this one, but that his office has not found a connection.
"This seems to be a random event," he said.
Still, Safer said he could have been more cautious.
"Be smarter, travel in groups," he advised. "I always used to walk alone."
