Filesystem question

[robbrown27709 at comcast.net]

I have a user who claims he did the following:
cp -r /u02/stuff  /u102
cd  /u102/stuff 
rm *
cd /u102
rmdir stuff
He claims that the stuff directory was removed from both /u02 & /u102. I tried to recreate this, but every time I do, it works correctly; only /u102/stuff is removed & /u02/stuff is intact. This guy is a very reputable DBA and everyone believes him. I am the Unix admin & I must explain this to the boss. I can't explain this. I have never seen anything like this. Is this possible? Any thoughts or comments? The following is the config:
/dev/cciss/c1d0p12   /u02
/dev/cciss/c1d1p2    /u102
Thanks in advance for any comments. 
-Robert Brown