Editor’s Note: The content in this article discusses a 2015 incident of sexual assault.
Near midnight on Oct. 30, Noah Rebei ’25 was discovered underneath the bed of a woman in Keeton House. The following day, he was arrested by campus police and charged with second-degree criminal trespassing and third-degree assault before being turned over to the Tompkins County Sheriff on Nov. 1.
Now, previously unreported details about the case reveal conflicting accounts from Rebei, the victim and her roommate after their statements made to Cornell University Police were released to The Sun by the Ithaca City Court. The women, whose names The Sun is withholding for their privacy, did not respond to requests for comment.
In Rebei’s statement to CUPD, he said that when he saw a group of women leave their room around 10 p.m., he “came up with the idea to scare them” on Halloween Eve. Once the women left the area, he went into their room, which was “left open.”
“I started to look for somewhere to hide and then I became very nervous when I heard them coming back. I quickly went under the bed,” Rebei said in his statement to the police.
Rebei told the police that he stayed under the bed for around 10 minutes. Later, in a statement to The Sun, Rebei said that he stayed under the bed for no more than 30 minutes.
However, according to the women’s statements, after they came to their dorm between 9 p.m. and 9:15 p.m., they never left the room fully unattended. The victim added that she only discovered the intruder sometime after 11:40 p.m., and according to the crime log, CUPD responded at 11:57 p.m., over two and a half hours after the room would have last been left empty.
According to the victim’s statement, in the time between returning to their dorm and discovering Rebei, she and her roommate showered, changed clothes in the dorm and engaged in personal phone calls. When the two women discovered Rebei, they were lying in bed, their dorm room entirely dark beside the light of their phones, they told the police.
The victim said she was about to get off a phone call with her boyfriend when she reportedly felt three taps underneath her legs. Moments later, after hanging up, she said she discovered “a head of curly dark hair” under the bed. She told CUPD she immediately yelled as loud as she could and ran to open the door, shouting at him to get out as he began to crawl out from under the bed.
An altercation ensued.
“He rushed toward me and when I noticed he was unarmed — unsure if he had any other objects on him — I reached my right arm out to grab the chest area of his shirt,” she told CUPD.
She held on as the man pushed around her before running out the door and down the stairwell, according to her statement. She said she could no longer hold onto him and was forced to let go as he reached the bottom of the stairs, reportedly rolling her right ankle as she fell onto the platform below. She told police that he then escaped out the exit door.
Soon after, police and emergency medical services arrived on the scene.
In a prior statement to The Sun, Rebei denied that he assaulted anyone and called the incident a “terrible decision” and a prank gone wrong.
The victim and her roommate told police that they were not familiar with the man, but they noted that they had seen him earlier in the evening. The roommate said she noticed him walk by their door at least four times in quick succession, according to the roommate’s statement, after they rode up in the same elevator. According to Rebei’s statement to CUPD, he lived just one door down.
Rebei told police that he ran away from the building and did not return until 5 a.m., later leaving in the late morning to get a haircut in order to change his look.
“I knew what I did was wrong and messed up so I needed to change my appearance,” Rebei said in his statement.
This is not the first time women at Cornell in recent years have found male intruders in their rooms. In 2023 a student came back to their dorm in Court-Kay-Bauer, took a nap and awoke to a rotten smell and an intruder under their bed. In 2015, a string of intrusions in quick succession occurred in off-campus locations, including one instance where a Cornell student reported waking up while an unknown man tried to remove her underwear.
When asked why incidents like Rebei’s keep occurring and how the University plans to respond, Vice President of Public Safety Dave Honan reiterated the duty of each individual in securing campus safety.
“While the blame lies with the offender, we all have a role to mitigate this threat and prevent unauthorized persons from entering secure areas,” Honan wrote. He went on to reference his Nov. 1 email to the Cornell community in which he discussed the importance of preventing tailgating, when non-residents follow residents into buildings
In the weeks following the event, the University has provided few updates on the Rebei case since the initial information release by CUPD. On Nov. 21, Keeton Hall residents received an email about the incident from Keeton House Professor-Dean Prof. Lindsay Anderson, biological and environmental engineering, and Perdita Das, the Bethe House assistant dean.
“While we cannot share details due to the ongoing investigation, please rest assured that we are taking all necessary actions and providing support to those directly affected,” Anderson and Das wrote.
When asked by The Sun for specific updates as to whether Rebei is still living on campus, taking classes or facing University punishment, Director of Cornell Media Relations Rebecca Valli declined to comment.
On Nov. 13, in Ithaca City Court, Deputy District Attorney Veronica Fox amended a stay-away order of protection to ban Rebei from Keeton House for six months. Taped to the residence hall’s front desk is a sign reading “URGENT: Do not issue keys or temp cards to Noah Rebei. If seen, call the [house assistant dean] on call.”
In court, Rebei was arraigned on charges of second-degree criminal trespassing and third-degree assault and entered into not-guilty pleas. If found guilty, each charge is a Class A misdemeanor. A Class A misdemeanor holds a maximum penalty of one year in prison and up to a $1,000 fine.