IRVINE : Robber Tear-Gasses UC Student in Home

A UC Irvine graduate student was sprayed with tear gas and robbed of about $30 Thursday morning by a man posing as a door-to-door newspaper salesman, police said.

The student told police that a man knocked on his apartment door on campus shortly before 11 a.m., saying he was from the Los Angeles Times and was seeking subscribers.

When the student said he already took the paper, the man asked to speak with his roommate, UCI Police Chief Mike Michell said. Told that the roommate wasn’t home, the man “sprayed the student in the face with tear gas and pushed him,” Michell said.

The attacker ran inside the Verano Place apartment, grabbed about $30 in cash sitting on a living room table and fled in a late-model white car, the student told investigators. The robber was described as a white man in his 20s, about 5 feet, 8 inches tall with black hair and wearing a purple and pink flowered-print shirt.

The student, whose name was not released, was not seriously injured, Michell said.

Ernie Vitucci, general manager for The Times Orange County Edition, said no Times employees from either the subscriptions or collections divisions were authorized to be in the UC Irvine area Thursday morning.

Vitucci said there have been reports of three similar incidents in the city of Costa Mesa, but that Times employees were not involved.