ALBANY — An 18-year-old State University at Albany student was raped just after midnight Saturday at a home in Pine Hills, police said.

Details of the events leading up to the attack and exactly where it took place were still unknown as of Sunday afternoon, though police said the victim told investigators she was raped around 12:30 a.m. at a home near the intersection of Quail Street and Western Avenue.

After she was attacked, the victim ran out of the house and called a friend for help, Officer Steve Smith said. The victim's friend picked her up nearby and took her to Albany Medical Center Hospital, where doctors contacted police.

The report of the rape comes on the first weekend after the start of SUNY Albany's fall semester, which began Aug. 27.

Police said the rape occurred in the heart of a student-heavy section of Pine Hills, where the streets, bars, pizza shops and apartment balconies swell with undergraduates deep into weekend nights once school is in session.

The victim in Saturday's attack was walking around the neighborhood alone just before she was raped, Smith said. Whether she intentionally walked into the home where the attack occurred or was taken inside against her will was unclear. It was also unclear if the woman was attacked by a stranger or a person she knew, Smith said. The police spokesman said the victim is from the Capital Region but was not familiar with the neighborhood.

School officials and police also did not say if the woman lived in the neighborhood, on-campus or somewhere else. This weekend was the first back in Albany for many students who move home for the summer.

Police said the victim had been drinking before she was raped and that she was having difficulty recalling precisely where the assault took place.

Hours after the rape was reported, SUNY Albany spokesman Karl Luntta said the university sent out an email to all students informing them of where the rape took place and urging anyone with information to contact police at 438-4000.

Though the investigation is still in its infancy, Smith said police have no reason to believe the attack is linked to any other recent unsolved sexual assaults.

In February, two women were raped in Washington Park in separate incidents that occurred less than 75 minutes apart from one another. That case remains unsolved.

A few recent rape cases in the city have netted arrests. A Cohoes man was charged with rape in May after police say he held a gun to a woman's back and raped her in a backyard on Clinton Street. In March 2011, an Albany man was arrested for sexually assaulting a woman after following her home on Lark Street.

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