The University of Rochester community was relieved after two missing students were rescued, injured but alive, from a home a few miles from campus where they were “forcibly…held against their will,” officials said according to NBC News.
The two students, identified as Nicholas Kollias, 21, and Ani Okeke-Ewo, 21, were seniors studying at the university and were last seen around 2 a.m. on Saturday driving together in a 2005 BMW SUV.
According to ABC 7 Chicago, Kollias and Okeke-Ewo were both part of the University of Rochester’s Yellowjackets football team.
A police SWAT team raided the home where the two were allegedly being held hostage on Sunday night, and were successfully able to extricate the students. Four people have been arrested in connection with the kidnapping, which Rochester Police Chief Michael Ciminelli said was “a targeted attack.”
The New York Daily News reports that Ciminelli during a press conference: “We have no information or evidence of any kind that this constituted a general threat to the University of Rochester community.”