Police arrested two men on West Campus on Thursday afternoon, charging each with a felony and accusing the duo of stealing a car, driving it into the City of Ithaca and then onto Cornell’s campus before being pulled over and detained.
The two men, identified by the Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office as Dillon Rohmann, 20, of Binghamton, and Cale J. Stark, 22, of Lisle, are not Cornell students, according to an online directory.
More than a half dozen officers responded to the scene of the traffic stop near the Sigma Pi fraternity and Watermargin Cooperative, aside the corner of McGraw Place and University Avenue.
With guns drawn, police shouted instructions to the two occupants of the car, a Toyota Echo, and detained them as more than a dozen students watched from windows and from the street. Police said Rohmann was driving the vehicle and Stark was a passenger.
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Police pulled over the two men, who were driving the Toyota Echo, and accused them of stealing the vehicle. Police later moved the car to the parking space above.
The encounter began nearly eight miles away shortly after noon on Thursday, when deputies arrived at 1414 Dryden Rd. in the Town of Dryden, responding to a report of a stolen vehicle.
Minutes later, deputies saw the stolen vehicle on Route 13 near the City of Ithaca, according to a media release from the Sheriff’s Office.
The release said deputies then conducted a traffic stop, apparently referring to the operation on West Campus.
Police charged each man with grand larceny in the fourth degree, a Class E felony. Both men were remanded to the Tompkins County Jail in lieu of $1,000 cash bail or $2,000 insured bond. A corrections official said shortly before 5 p.m. that both men were in custody.
Officers from the Ithaca Police Department and Cornell University Police Department assisted in the arrest, as well as State Police troopers. The Sheriff’s Office said in a release that the investigation is ongoing and further charges are pending.