Grad Student Mugged In Porter Square

On Monday night, Andrew Mao, a first-year student at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, was mugged by two unarmed men while walking near Porter Square in Somerville, a little over a mile from the Science Center.

The incident took place at 11:44 p.m., according to Somerville Deputy Police Chief Paul Upton.

“There was this car driving slowly around my neighborhood,” Mao said. “It stopped and backed up when the drivers saw me coming towards them. Two people jumped out of the car and waited on the side of the road in a dark spot.”

When Mao walked past them, he said they began to punch and kick him.

“They were pretty bad at it. It didn’t hurt very much,” said Mao. His shouts attracted the attention of neighbors, who called the police.

After Mao dropped his phone, he said one assailant said “I got his phone,” and the two left, leaving their vehicle. Police later towed the car.

Mao and another neighbor gave the police a description of the two assailants.

Two men matching the description were apprehended nearby, one with the keys to the towed car, Mao said.

According to Upton, the suspects were then charged with unarmed robbery.

Despite the mugging, Mao said of the neighborhood, “it’s a pretty safe neighborhood in general.”

Mao, who studies Computer Science at the GSAS, spent four years at the University of Pennsylvania, a campus with a higher incidence of robberies than Harvard, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Education.

“It’s ironic that I didn’t get mugged in four years at Penn, but did in less than two months at Harvard,” he said.

Mao said he feels some empathy for his assailants.

“Some people can be in dire situations...The recession has probably made people a lot more desperate.”

Statistics from the Somerville Police Department, however, suggest otherwise.

“Robberies since September 1st are experiencing a slight increase, but that robberies since January 1st are generally down,” Upton said. “Crime, especially against people, is like a heartbeat. It goes up and down.”

He added that some of the robberies seem connected. There have been four arrests in the Porter Square area in the last week.

Steven G. Catalano, spokesman for the Harvard University Police Department, declined to comment.