Two students stepped in to catch a suspect and help a female student when she was put in a chokehold and robbed the morning of April 16.
According to the affidavit for the arrest of suspect William Hilterbran, 22, Hilterbran attacked a female student while she was paying for parking in the McKinley garage around 9:15 a.m. on April 16.
As she put her wallet in her backpack, Hilterbran came up behind her and put her in a chokehold, chipping her tooth. He demanded her money.
The victim managed to scream and two males came to her aid, the affidavit said.
Junior child development major Andrew Bova was listed on the case summary report as a witness and was interviewed by university police April 20. The summary also listed two other witnesses, one of which was a student.
Bova told the Daily News he was driving on Ashland Avenue to the parking garage Thursday morning when he saw two men fighting outside, one on top of the other. He recognized the person on the bottom as a fellow student.
He said he stopped in the street, got out of his car and pulled Hilterbran off of the first witness, who then told him that Hilterbran had robbed someone.
“I wanted to know what the cause was,” Bova said. “The guy did not look like he fit in. He looked like a bum. He didn’t have shoes or socks on. He is on top of a kid that looks like he is a student going to class. It’s an instinct of reaction when you see someone in need, you just get in the middle of it.”
According to the affidavit, Hilterbran had run out of his shoes.
Hilterbran took off, and the two students chased him. Another fight occurred in the alley by the Subway on University, the affidavit said.
The chase continued, and Bova described having the suspect in a bear hug at one point to restrain him. He said Hilterbran was yelling at pedestrians saying Bova was assaulting him.
Bova said he chased Hilterbran for around 10 minutes, following him through traffic on McKinley Avenue back to the parking garage where the affidavit said Hilterbran was arrested by UPD at 9:25 a.m.
Hilterbran is still being held in the Delaware County Jail on a $30,000 bond on two charges of battery and one charge each of robbery and strangulation.
University Police Chief Jim Duckham said the incident stands out as an anomaly. Duckham has been at Ball State since August, and he said in the past school year, he has not seen anything like this happen.
“You don’t want to [call it a] crime of opportunity to minimize what happened, but that’s what that was,” Duckham said. “A person chose to do something that they shouldn’t have done. The victim was just at that spot where the person chose to do it.”
He commented on how the robbery happened in broad daylight in a well-occupied spot with people around to see it and respond.
“You can’t even explain why criminals do what they do,” Duckham said.
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