Ithaca Police have charged a man with multiple felonies after he ran through downtown Ithaca naked under the influence of drugs and was struck by a car. Police were first dispatched to Cayuga Lake, to the Lighthouse Pier area, for a report of a person yelling for help just after 8 o’clock Saturday night. An off-duty police officer commandeered a boat from the Treman Marina, and rescue vessels from the Ithaca Fire Department and New York State Park Police also launched in search of the person in the water. They reportedly found the missing person’s clothes but not the person himself. 45 minutes after the search had began, a call was made for a naked man running through downtown Ithaca. The man, 20-year-old Derek Deboer of Ithaca, had been struck by a car. After being found by police, he began fighting with the officers, and he had to be subdued with a Taser after he attempted to remove an officer’s handgun from its holster. Police determined that Deboer had been the man who had reportedly fallen into the water earlier in the night. He told officers that he was under the influence of marijuana and LSD. He is now facing felony charges of attempted robbery and criminal possession of a weapon, along with a misdemeanor count of obstructing governmental administration.
