LITTLE ROCK (KTHV) - Residents are sounding off about college students causing trouble in the neighborhood.
It's allegedly happening around Arkansas Baptist College and neighbors say the concerns stem long before last week's homicide near campus.
After last week's homicide, we talked with the President of the Wright Avenue Neighborhood Association, Sheila Miles. We asked her about the group's efforts to improve the area and the first thing she actually mentioned were neighborhood concerns over students doing everything from loitering to fighting. Miles claims that they remain unresolved issues with the college and more neighbors we talked to agree.
Samuel Mitchell has lived at the corner of 18th Street and Bishop Street in Little Rock for 11 years. It's right across from Arkansas Baptist College, with some alleged trouble spilling over.
"I've even had times where some of them even stand in my yard, smoking or loitering and stuff," Mitchell said.
Mitchell claims that they're Arkansas Baptist College students. He says, for the most part, the students are loitering down the street, hanging out on cement walls abutting sidewalks and are not always doing so quietly.
"Loud talking, loud music sometimes at night," Mitchell said.
"From a neighborhood perspective, it's an encroachment issue I think," Scott Green said. "I have had to ask some of the students that have, that have decided to camp out if you will, not do to so and yet it continues to go on."
Both he and Mitchell say they've raised these concerns with the college but there's been no real response so far.
School officials were not able to speak with us on camera for this story Monday. But a spokeswoman says that officials are aware of the neighbors concerns and they've actually met with them at previous community meetings to address them. But apparently there's more work to be done.
"I feel that some of them still haven't been addressed," Mitchell said.
"It becomes a matter of respect, respect of other people's property," Green said.
They are neighbors, just wanting to enjoy a place they call home.
As for improvements, the neighbors that we talked to say they'd like to see tighter campus security and a fence around campus. Green added he believes this is a matter of young people just not having enough to do.
We do plan to follow up more with the school and try to get more of a response about any security plans ahead.