The neighborhoods surrounding Loyola Marymount University are relatively safe, but a series of recent break-ins are leaving off-campus students worried about their safety.
On March 4, there was a shooting in front of Lily Flexon’s house which left one injured while three fled the scene. Flexon lives off-campus with four other girls just a 20-minute walk away from campus. The police and SWAT team were called and searched the surrounding area and took the footage from Flexon’s Ring camera. “We’re right next to the main road, so that makes it a little more stressful because there can easily be people coming in,”said Flexon. “It’s terrifying being by the main street.”
Last semester, LMU junior Olivia Durbin’s house was broken into in November 2023 at 5 a.m., “I heard a loud bang, and when I looked out in the living room, a man was sitting on our couch and eating our food. It was really scary.” Durbin said. Thankfully no one was harmed or injured, but since the break-in, Durbin has begun to take her safety more seriously.
Living off campus has many safety concerns, but an incident in October 2022, left its mark on Audrey Ackerman, a ‘23 LMU graduate. Ackerman, an LMU senior at the time, had dealt with a homeless man living in her backyard while also stalking her and her roommates in the house. Ackerman and her roommates found lots of unusual trash in their backyard along with some of their outside furniture being tampered with. Still, not thinking any of these situations could happen to them, they assumed it was from the wind. “I was naïve to the fact that someone was probably living in our backyard a lot longer, but the girls who previously lived in the house had this exact same experience, and we were not informed about it, so I would say it happened for years in that house,” Ackerman said.
One night, when Ackerman was taking the trash out to her backyard, she saw a man staring at her while crouching below their lawn chairs. Terrified, Ackerman has made safety her main priority since then. “I am very, very careful. I keep weapons like tasers and knives near my bed. I check behind me all the time, so I definitely changed a lot in how I view safety.” Ackerman said.
