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A 21-year-old college student suspected of murder in Georgia was tracked down and arrested by police while he was hiding out at a small community college in New York.
Dawensley Astrel was attending SUNY Broome Community College in Binghamton when he was arrested on Sept. 16, according to law enforcement. Georgia State University Police had an arrest warrant out for him.
“It’s not every day that you find yourself on a college campus taking someone into custody for a homicide,” Capt. Frederick J. Akshar II of the Broome County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) told Fox News Digital.
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Dawensley Astrel, a fugitive wanted for murder in Georgia, was arrested in New York. (Broome County Sheriff’s Office)
Akshar and his team tracked down Astrel after the BCSO received information that the college student had an active arrest warrant for murder in Georgia.
“We have a crime analysis center here. Our folks in the crime analysis center were able to push the information out to us in real time from the Georgia authorities that they were looking for Mr. Astrel,” Akshar said. “Knowing that he was wanted for a homicide in Georgia, that he may have had some relationship with this particular region, our partners at the community college, our law enforcement partners, recognized the name as a possible student.”
He added that authorities quickly learned Astrel had provided the college with an inaccurate home address.
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Police said they found Broome Community College student Dawensley Astrel, who is suspected of murder in Georgia, hiding out on campus in Binghamton, N.Y. (Instagram/sunybroomecc)
“One of the first questions I asked … was are we going to do a search of his residence? Thinking that there may be evidence from the homicide, but we were not able to verify where exactly Mr. Astrel was staying. The address that he gave, which was an older address … he was not associated with anymore,” Akshar explained.
The BCSO coordinated with SUNY Broome Campus Safety to arrest Astrel without incident while he was on campus. Astrel was registered at Broome Community College on a part-time basis and lived off campus, the college told Fox News Digital in a statement.
“Our detective bureau … conducted what I would describe as a three-day surveillance operation. And then, the third day, we were able to take him into custody while he was at the community college,” Akshar said.
While Akshar could not disclose the exact time frame of the crime or provide more information on the homicide, he said Broome County police had been looking for the murder suspect for about a week.
This view shows the Broome Community College campus in Binghamton, N.Y., where police arrested murder suspect Dawensley Astrel on a warrant out of Georgia. (Instagram/sunybroomecc)
“Our region in general, we’re kind of … in the middle of major cities in the state of New York,” Akshar said. “And, you know, we find ourselves more often than not dealing with folks that maybe committed a homicide in Rochester, came to Binghamton to hide or committed a homicide in the city of New York and came to Binghamton to hide,” Akshar said. “So, I guess this type of crime and people wanted for this type of crime is not uncommon for us. But, you know, finding yourself on a college campus, taking someone into custody for a homicide, a student no less, is not a common occurrence.”
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“College operations were not impacted, and at no point was there a threat to student or employee staff, which is always our top priority,” SUNY Broome Community College told Fox News Digital in a statement.
Georgia State University Police did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital for comment or information on the case. No information about the Georgia murder case has been released.
“I think it was a very collaborative and coordinated effort by members of law enforcement to take a very dangerous person into custody without anyone else being harmed,” Akshar said.
Astrel is to be extradited to Georgia sometime in the next week, the BCSO told Fox News Digital.
Mollie Markowitz is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Email tips to [email protected]. She joined Fox in 2019 and made her way from producing live news coverage to true-crime documentaries at Fox Nation. She has interviewed Ted Bundy survivors, the children of notorious serial killers, survivor Lisa McVey, members of law enforcement and families impacted by traumatic crime.Currently, she covers national crime stories for Fox News Digital. You can follow Mollie on LinkedIn.