One Indiana University student was in jail Sunday night and another was out on bail after an early morning stabbing that sent a student to the hospital and put the university's campus on safety alert for nearly four hours.
IU police arrested Zesen Shen, 18, and Kaiyu Luo, 21, several hours after a 3:30 a.m. altercation outside the Tulip Tree Apartments at the corner of East 10th Street and the Ind. 45/46 Bypass. They charged Shen with intimidation and battery and Luo with intimidation.
Bail for each man was set at $5,000 surety, $500 cash, according to Monroe County Jail officials. Luo bonded out at 3:50 p.m. Sunday. Shen's bond was on a one-day hold. He could not be released for 24 hours after his booking time, which was 10 a.m. Sunday.
A third man involved in the incident was treated at IU Health Bloomington Hospital and released, IU spokesman Mark Land said Sunday afternoon. That man, a 20-year-old IU student, was taken to the hospital with non life-threatening injuries after being stabbed in the back, Land said.
Witnesses to the early morning altercation reported the three men met in the Tulip Tree Apartments parking lot to settle a dispute, according to police. Shen and Luo chased the 20-year-old victim, and witnesses said Shen wounded him with a knife, police said. The suspects then fled the scene.
IU officials started sending campus alerts about the incident at about 4 a.m. Those alerts, which went out as text messages, emails, Twitter posts and automated phone calls to IU-connected personnel on campus and beyond, warned those around campus to take shelter and lock doors. Early alerts referred to an armed individual at large on campus but did not specify that a knife was involved.
Later alerts revealed police were searching for an individual armed with a knife. Then at approximately 7:30 a.m., campus officials started giving all-clear signals. Alerts at the time said the suspects had not been located but that investigators determined they did not pose a danger to campus because the altercation was between acquaintances.
Police discovered Shen and Luo inside a Tulip Tree apartment just after 8 a.m. Four other people were in the apartment, and police took them all in for questioning. But the other four were not suspects in the incident, police said.
That ended a long morning for some Indiana University students in the Tulip Tree Apartments. Keli Hayes, a senior art management and business major who is originally from Indianapolis, said she was visiting a friend's Tulip Tree residence and decided to leave shortly after the altercation took place -- before she received any safety warnings.
"I got into the elevator, and when the elevator doors opened, there was one police officer holding a gun at the elevator I was in and another police officer holding a gun the opposite direction, toward a set of doors," Hayes said. "Once they made the decision that I wasn't the subject they were looking for, they instructed me to go back upstairs."
Hayes went back to her friend's room to wait for the all-clear signal. She said she wasn't able to sleep until 8 a.m. because of phone calls and text messages.
She tried to tell family members who may have seen the news that she was safe, she said. Hayes also received a call from an adviser in IU's Office of Admissions who was making sure she was all right.
There were some tense moments before officials said they were searching for someone with a knife, Hayes said.
"Before they announced that it was a knife, we were scared because we didn't know if someone had a gun," she said. "They just kept saying an armed suspect. We didn't know what type of arms to look for."
Not everyone in the apartment complex spent the morning awake, however. Austin Doyle, a senior environmental science major who is originally from Greenwood, said he received alerts on his phone. But he was already in his room in the Tulip Tree Apartments.
"They woke me up, but I just went back to sleep," he said.
Copyright 2013 - Herald-Times, Bloomington, Ind.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
