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)