Flyers Notify Students of 3rd Attack : Assaults: College hopes that students will be more alert after a third woman was assaulted Thursday. No suspects have been arrested.

A 37-year-old Costa Mesa woman was robbed in an Orange Coast College parking lot, prompting campus officials on Friday to paper buildings and parked cars with flyers to alert students about a string of attacks.

The unidentified woman was robbed by two men of $53 and her watch at 8 p.m. Thursday after she parked her car in a campus lot, Costa Mesa police said. Because one of the men fondled her while taking the cash and her wrist watch, the assailants are wanted on both robbery and sexual battery charges.

The woman, who reported the incident from her home, is the third woman to be accosted on the campus this year, said John Farmer, chief of campus safety at Orange Coast College.

Costa Mesa Police Detective Sgt. Mike Millington said Friday that the three attacksappear to be unrelated.

College officials, who faced criticism last March for failing to notify students promptly of the first attack in which a woman was abducted and raped at another location, moved quickly Friday to place flyers in all large lecture halls, in restrooms, and on the windshield of all cars in campus lots.

“Our first responsibility is to alert students and staff,” Sharon K. Donoff, vice president of student services, said in a statement released by the college.

Flyers with details of Thursday’s robbery and battery will be placed on cars again Monday and Tuesday to ensure that all students and visitors are notified to use caution, college spokesman Jim Carnett said.

Farmer noted that since the March attack, the college has increased security spending by $3,000 a week and taken a number of measures to ensure student safety, including beefing up the number of security personnel on campus and requiring officers to drive patrol vehicles with their lights flashing at night.

Farmer said the flashing lights of an approaching patrol vehicle may have frightened the men in the latest attack.

“It was my understanding from talking to (police) who interviewed her that one of the suspects said, ‘Here comes some flashing lights, let’s get out of here,’ ” he said.

The police report only indicates that the headlights of an approaching car sent the attackers fleeing, Millington said.

According to police, the woman pulled into a campus parking lot at the southeast end of campus at 8 p.m., intending to petition to get into a class. She stopped first to put some things in her car trunk, and was approached from behind by two men.

Millington said one of the men pressed a hard object against her back, told her it was a gun and demanded both cash and her watch. As the man reached over her shoulder for the valuables, the woman told police that he fondled her through her clothing. It was at that point that car lights sent both men scurrying away on foot.

The woman described her primary attacker as a middle-age white male, about 5 feet, 11 inches tall with a stocky build. She could tell police little about his accomplice, Millington said.

The woman immediately drove home, told her boyfriend of the incident and then reported the incident to authorities. Millington said she was not physically injured during the robbery and battery. No arrests had been made as of late Friday.

The first sexual assault occurred March 11 in a parking lot at the north end of the campus near Adams Avenue. In that assault, a man forced a 23-year-old woman student to drive her car to a nearby market, where he raped her. In the second attack, which occurred April 30, a woman was grabbed from behind and knocked down in a parking lot at the east end of campus, but the attacker fled when he heard voices.

No one has been arrested in either case, police said.