>A University of Minnesota-Duluth student visiting friends over spring break was assaulted on his way to Burrito Loco March 11.

At about 2:30 a.m., Steve Buron, a business and accounting junior, said he saw two men walking ahead of him on the icy sidewalk. One of the men fell and Buron went to help him up. The second man turned around and apparently thought Buron knocked his friend down, Buron said.

That’s when the second man sucker-punched Buron in the mouth, knocking out one of his front teeth and cracking two others.

“I had two nerves hanging out,” he said. “The pain was pretty bad.”

Buron said he tried to chase down the men as they fled in a car but was unsuccessful. Instead, he called police and received treatment for his injury at Hennepin County Medical Center, according to a police report.

Buron said his two cracked teeth had to be pulled, and he is waiting for replacements.

Buron said his mom always told him it was dangerous to walk the streets of Minneapolis at night and chalked up this encounter as “horrible luck.”

The case has not been assigned to an investigator because there was no sufficient identifying information about the suspects, said Lt. Amelia Huffman, spokesperson for the Minneapolis police.

An ‘eerie’ burglary

A house in the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood stood empty for spring break. Five of the occupants were in Mexico and San Francisco while a sixth stayed at her parents’ house in Hugo, Minn. The doors were locked and everything seemed fine.

In the evening hours of March 12, the roommate who stayed behind checked on the house and found her laptop missing.

French sophomore Susan Closmore said she checked her roommates’ rooms and found two more computers had been stolen.

Closmore called the crime “eerie” because the front door was locked and nothing else in the house had been touched.

“We had DVD players out, hundred-dollar cameras out, but they went right after the computers,” Closmore said. “The house was undisturbed except for computers off desks.”

Huffman said the thieves entered the house through an unlocked window.

The police were prompt to respond but can’t really do anything to help, Closmore said. She said the police told them their best bet is if the computers are pawned.

“It’s a big loss,” Closmore said about losing her laptop. “More than just the $1,500 it cost; I had a 25-page paper on it and stuff I need for the semester.”

Police arrest attackers

Police arrested two males for assault and a female for obstruction following an altercation early Sunday.

A group of about 10 or 15 people attacked three University students in the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood at about 1:30 a.m., police said.

The names of the victims, two males and one female, were not released.

Lt. Tony Diaz, commander of the Minneapolis Police Assault Unit, said an exchange of words between the two groups deteriorated and led to a physical altercation.

He said the motive isn’t clear, but perhaps the group was “looking for trouble.”

The female victim had her purse stolen and suffered a cut and swelling around her nose, Huffman said. One of the male victims received a laceration to his head. Both received treatment at the University Medical Center, Fairview, Huffman said. The third victim did not suffer any injuries.

One of the victims managed to call police, and when they arrived, they arrested two males for assault and a female for obstruction, Huffman said. The rest of the group had left the scene, she said.

Diaz said the case is under further investigation.