Police investigate fatal altercation on ITI campus

Police investigate fatal altercation on ITI campus

TANGERANG (JP): Local police detectives are still looking for
the main suspects in a vicious fight between students of
different schools of the Indonesian Institute of Technology (ITI)
in Serpong that cost the life of one student.

"We'll conduct a thorough investigation of the student's death
and will soon summon several people that witnessed the fatal
incident for questioning," head of the Tangerang Police chief Lt.
Col. Pudji Hartanto told reporters on Tuesday.

So far, he said, his men had questioned two witnesses. He,
however, refused to identify who they were.

Tangerang Police gave a different version of the incident from
that put forward by their superiors at Jakarta Police
headquarters, which supervises the Tangerang Police precinct.

According to Pudji, the victim, Sami Leonardo Turanang, 25, a
final grade student of the institute's mechanical engineering
school, died on Sunday with severe wounds to many parts of his
body and head after being beaten during a brawl with rivals from
the electrical engineering school from the same institute.

The fight took place on Saturday during a music show on their
campus. The police believed the brawl was sparked following a
heated dispute between supporters of the two rival groups in a
football match three days earlier.

It was during Saturday's fight that Sami was beaten. He died
on Sunday evening at the Honoris Hospital in Tangerang.

Upset with the death of their friend, students of the
mechanical engineering school took revenge on Monday by
vandalizing the workshop of the rival school.

Besides damaging the building, they students also destroyed
five TV sets and two computers at the workshop.

Burning

Separately, Jakarta Police spokesman Lt. Col. Zainuri Lubis
disclosed that the students angrily set ablaze the workshop of
ITI's electrical engineering school.

According to Zainuri, the losses in the Monday fire, which
lasted until 7 p.m., included several pieces of electrical
engineering equipment and some communication devices.

"ITI rector Yorga Ibrahim has already spoken with the students
of both schools. They have promised not to engage in such crazy
behavior again," he said.

As of Tuesday, reporters and police were not allowed by the
students to enter the campus.

Tangerang Police detectives Capt. Rachmad Wibowo had even
changed his uniform and pretended to be a student of the campus
in an attempt to collect information and to see the damage.

Student brawls have colored the streets and campuses in
Jakarta and its surroundings in the past few years, leaving
scores of students from junior high school to university level
dead.

In late September, a 22-year-old student was butchered to
death in a violent brawl between students of two rival schools of
Trisakti University over a long-time dispute on the university's
campus grounds in Grogol, West Jakarta.

At least two other students were injured.

Colleagues identified the dead victim as Muhammad Taufik
Lubis, who was in his last year at the mechanical engineering
school, and the wounded ones as Salman Arfaiziar and Yudo Arsito,
both 19 and students of the department of oil at the university's
mineral engineering school.

Taufik was fatally stabbed in the left thigh and died at the
nearby Sumber Waras Hospital in West Jakarta. (41/bsr/ylt)