Robbers Strike Outside Dudley

A man was the victim of an attempted armed robbery on Massachusetts Avenue near Sacramento Street right outside of the Dudley Co-op on Saturday at 12:45 a.m., according to the Cambridge Police Department.

The victim, a resident of Erie Street near MIT, was not a Harvard affiliate, according to e-mails from Harvard University Police Department spokesperson Steven G. Catalano and Cambridge Police Department spokesman Daniel M. Riviello.

According to Riviello, two suspects approached the victim and asked for his money. When the victim said that he did not have any, the suspects “sliced him twice in the face” with a pocket knife before fleeing the scene.

After the robbery, the victim went to a friend’s house before taking a taxi to a hospital, the name of which Riviello declined to disclose.

“After consulting with CPD, we made a determination that there was not a continuing threat to the community, hence no advisory,” Catalano wrote in reference to why a community advisory has not been released.

This was the fourth armed robbery close to the Harvard campus in just over a week. Last Tuesday night, a Somerville resident was robbed on Shepard Street near Walker Street, right outside of the Quad. A day earlier, two Harvard affiliates were robbed at knifepoint separately in the vicinity of Kirkland and Irving Streets and Harvard Divinity School.

While the Cambridge Police Department believed the first three robberies were committed by the same two suspects, they do not think the most recent crime is connected to the series of robberies that has taken place over the past few weeks.

“We have no reason to believe that this [most recent] incident is related to the string of recent street robberies in Cambridge as one suspect in those incidents is currently in custody,” Riviello wrote.

—Staff writer Sirui Li can be reached at sli@college.harvard.edu.