The man convicted of stealing a Kansas University freshman’s car at gunpoint in the garage of an all-female residence hall will spend nearly a decade in prison after his sentencing Wednesday.

But some residents of Gertrude Sellards Pearson and Corbin halls continue to fear for their safety walking to and from their cars after dark. One reason is that the school has yet to finish a plan first announced in August 2004 to install surveillance cameras in the area and at other residence halls.

Police are asking for patience, saying they are close to installing a top-of-the-line system.

“It involves a lot of planning,” said Rhonda Birdsong, who’s coordinating the project for the KU Public Safety Office. “We just don’t want to throw up a haphazard system.”

Some students are tired of waiting.

“They probably should just do it quickly, because it’s our safety, and we’re all girls,” said Maggie McGuire, a freshman who lives in Corbin.

“Just get them in,” said Mallory Goldstein, a freshman who lives in GSP.

The Sept. 27 carjacking, which came about a month after KU announced it would install the cameras, was the third violent crime in a one-year period in campus residence-hall lots. On Wednesday, Douglas County District Court Judge Michael Malone sentenced the robber, Jesse A. Plaster, 23, Tonganoxie, to 102 months in prison for aggravated robbery and six months for fleeing to elude police.

Two crimes that happened before the carjacking caused students to complain that the parking lots were unsafe. In October 2003, an attacker held a female Ellsworth Hall resident at knifepoint as she was walking to her car in the Lied Center overflow lot; and in February 2004, a man waved a knife and threatened a female student in the GSP/Corbin parking garage.

Neither case resulted in physical injury.

6news video: KU parking garage gunman sentenced 6news video: Security cameras planned for parking garage Tonganoxie man guilty of carjacking (12-23-04) 6News video: Plaster found guilty in car-jacking trial (12-22-04) Students uneasy after stickup (09-29-04) 6News video: Authorities make arrest in carjacking case (09-28-04) KU student robbed on campus (09-28-04) 6News video: KU student robbed at gunpoint (09-28-04)

Digital cameras are planned for three general areas: the Daisy Hill residence hall lots; a Lied Center parking lot that serves as overflow resident parking; and the lots around GSP/Corbin.

The school has signed a contract with Kansas City, Mo.-based Capital Electric to install the cameras. The final cost hasn’t been determined, but Birdsong estimated it at $200,000.

No target date has been set for their installation, and a study to determine exact locations for the cameras should be finished in the next few weeks, Birdsong said.

“I know everybody wants them overnight, but that’s an impossible request to fulfill,” she said.

Not all dorm residents are frustrated with the delay.

“I’m real into doing it right the first time,” said Jessica Sullivan, a junior who lives in GSP. “It takes a long time to research that kind of stuff.”

After the first cameras are installed, the school will look at adding cameras at Oliver Hall and at linking the new cameras with existing systems at Watson Library, the Kansas Union and the student recreation center, Birdsong said.