Student, former student arrested in robbery on CSU campus

Three men burst into a dorm room. One of them pointed a handgun at a Charleston Southern University student and demanded money. He appeared to be mad about his marijuana and iPod being stolen.

Witnesses to an apparent robbery gave that account to North Charleston police when the men arrived at the campus shortly after 9 p.m. Monday. It would lead to a campus-wide lockdown that lasted almost four hours. Police later arrested two men — a student and a former student — on armed robbery charges.

Charleston Southern’s dean of students Bob Ratliff and other school officials planned to attend a bail hearing on Leeds Avenue this evening to make their feelings known.

“I will state my case very forcefully to the judge that these two should not be released on bail,” said Ratliff, who considers the two a threat.

Police said Justin Tyrone Moore, 20, of Greenville and Tangie C. White, 23, of North Charleston are facing armed robbery charges from the Monday night dorm room incident. The bond hearing was scheduled for 9 p.m. Tuesday.

Though a police report mentions three people bursting into a dormitory on the school’s University Boulevard campus, officials have identified only two suspects.

Officials said the two also are suspects in a robbery and attempted robbery of McDonald’s restaurants on Rivers Avenue the same day.

Public information officer Spencer Pryor said Moore and White are under investigation in the holdup of a McDonald’s near Otranto Road about 4:50 a.m. and an attempted holdup of another McDonald’s on Rivers near Aviation Avenue about 10 minutes earlier. Both cases involved a car going through the drive-thru and a person inside pointing a gun at employees, incident reports show.

Ratliff said White was a current student, but is now being suspended because of the arrest. Moore was suspended last year after being caught with marijuana for a second time and was not supposed to be on campus, he said. A first offense for having marijuana on campus does not usually warrant a suspension, he said.

The university received the first call about a gun on campus a few minutes after 9 p.m. Officials placed the school on lockdown until about 1 a.m. today.

Officials went door-to-door and sent out a simultaneous warning message via cell phones, voice mail and text messages. Doug Dickerson, director of university relations, said the message did not reach everybody because of a “glitch” that the school’s information technology department has since corrected.

The 18-year-old student who initially reported the robbery on campus said he was in a room at West Russell dormitory with several other people. Officers identified Moore and White through witnesses at the scene.

White was arrested near the campus, Ratliff said. Officers arrested Moore asleep in someone else’s dorm room on campus, according to the incident report.

Check Charleston.net for more details later today.