Juli Boeheim, wife of legendary men’s basketball coach Jim Boeheim, was robbed at gunpoint on Tuesday in the parking lot of a shopping mall in Syracuse, New York.
The robbery was reported at 2:08 p.m. when a young man approached Boeheim while she was sitting in her car near a Cheesecake Factory entrance. The suspect talked with Boeheim before pointing a gun at her and grabbing her purse.
The young man along with two others fled the scene in a nearby car that had been reportedly stolen. Boeheim was not injured in the armed robbery incident, according to the police.
According to WHAM-TV, another woman was also robbed at gunpoint in the same mall last week.
Crime historian and Syracuse University professor Andrew Cohen calls Boeheim’s armed robbery a “crime of opportunity.”
“Armed robberies tend to occur in poorly lit places where people are walking, where there isn’t much foot traffic, where there aren’t a lot of police patrols, and actually Destiny USA’s parking lots are a very good example of that,” said Cohen.
The professor claims that desperation is often a common motive for this kind of crime and people who commit armed robbery tend to target well-off victims.
“A large percentage of armed robberies are committed by people who are in need of money to buy drugs, or sometimes to pay their rent or to buy food, but it’s a crime often committed out of desperation,” he said.
In addition to armed robbery, the Syracuse mall has seen a spike in crimes recently. Last month, gunshots rang out in a mall bathroom during an online sale meetup. Cohen said the motives there are different.
“In other words, every day we all have interactions with one another that can be testy,” he says. “We try to control ourselves, but some people succeed, and some people fail.”
Cohen suggests adding police presence at the mall, as he says that having heavier surveillance could lead to a decline in crime rate.
Unfortunately, the Syracuse Police Department said in response that it currently does not have enough resources to make it happen.
