Three armed suspects held three St. Thomas students at gunpoint Feb. 7 inside their home. One of the students was beaten.

Police rushed to the scene of the crime after receiving a call from one of the victims saying that there had been an armed robbery and that his roommate had been badly beaten by the masked men.

“I was sitting in the basement playing Xbox, and three guys with masks holding guns came into our house,” said the student, who asked his name to be removed after initial publication.

Two of the students were in the basement of their home in their separate bedrooms when the men entered the house. Their third roommate was not home.

“Two went into my roomates’ room and one came into mine, and I immediately got on the floor and put my face in the carpet,” the student said.

The student immediately gave up his cell phone and wallet when asked. While in his room he heard a gunshot go off in his roommate’s room. The gunshot may have been a blank because authorities were unable to find a bullet hole.

“[He] got beaten up for a while, he had some cuts and bruises on his face and head. The police asked if an ambulance was needed and I said yes, in case [he] was injured worse than I thought,” the student said.

The three masked men eventually left, taking an assortment of valuables with them. All three of the students have temporarily moved out of their off-campus home.

Mike Barrett, the manager of investigations at the St. Thomas Department of Public Safety, said that there was not a notification sent out on the USTALERT system because the police had already sent out a notification of the crime.

“The reason in this case that we withheld community notification is that police had already done it and any additional information put out by us specifically to our community had the possible risk of compromising law enforcement efforts to investigate this reported crime,” Barrett wrote in an email.

“Generally speaking we will still alert the community if the crime occurred within six blocks from our St. Paul campus,” Barrett said.

Although it was a frightening experience, it taught the students a valuable lesson.

“Lock your doors, even when you’re home because you never know. This could have happened to anyone,” the student said.

Further investigations are currently underway.

Lauren Knisley can be reached at knis1243@stthomas.edu

A previous version of this story reported that the USTALERT was not sent out because of the location of the crime based on initial information.

This story was edited on Feb. 19 to redact the victim’s names after a request to do so.